Islands Trust Financial Planning Committee regular meeting, November 8, 2023

[0:00:00] Trustee Bernardo: we've been given under Section 3 of the Islands Trust Act.

[0:00:04] Trustee Bernardo: That puts a duty on us and to fulfill that duty

[0:00:07] Trustee Bernardo: with honor and wisdom, we have to work side by side

[0:00:12] Trustee Bernardo: with the nations who were and continue to be

[0:00:14] Trustee Bernardo: the first stewards of what many of us now call

[0:00:17] Trustee Bernardo: the Islands Trust Area.

[0:00:20] Trustee Bernardo: And we're obviously familiar with these types

[0:00:24] Trustee Bernardo: of acknowledgments we make at these meetings,

[0:00:27] Trustee Bernardo: but as always, I counsel people not to take them

[0:00:31] Trustee Bernardo: as a simple formality but as a reminder of the work we have to do and especially in fact today

[0:00:37] Trustee Bernardo: we've got some issues that relate to reconciliation and related issues uh and uh that diligence and

[0:00:46] Trustee Bernardo: goodwill uh that we're called upon to apply to every thing that we do

[0:00:51] Voice 18: goes

[0:00:53] Trustee Bernardo: double when it comes

[0:00:56] Trustee Bernardo: to dealing with matters related reconciliation and related matters and with that thank you

[0:01:03] Trustee Bernardo: everybody for your indulgence and uh i'm going to call the meeting to order and let's review the

[0:01:12] Trustee Bernardo: agenda uh i'm not familiar with i don't believe there's any late items or new items that i'm aware

[0:01:18] Trustee Bernardo: of or if there's any need to reorder the agenda but uh if anybody has

[0:01:23] Voice 8: any comments along those

[0:01:24] Voice 8: lines please let me know now seeing none we'll move on uh i take that to uh i'm going to assume

[0:01:36] Voice 8: assume unless I hear otherwise that the uh the agenda has been approved by general consent all

[0:01:46] Voice 8: right not hearing any objections we move on to the next item um

[0:01:50] Trustee Bernardo: this is the the space that we

[0:01:52] Trustee Bernardo: have available for the public to uh to make comments if there's anybody uh out

[0:01:57] Voice 8: there who

[0:01:58] Voice 8: wishes to do so and uh I'm asking the meeting coordinator if we have anybody

[0:02:05] Trustee Bernardo: in the waiting

[0:02:06] Trustee Bernardo: or the you know virtual waiting room that is wishing to make comments there

[0:02:12] Voice 17: are no members

[0:02:13] Voice 17: of the public in attendance virtually at this point

[0:02:17] Trustee Bernardo: and uh i see by

[0:02:20] Voice 8: the agenda that there are

[0:02:21] Voice 8: no delegations and there are also no correspondence so with that let's move on to the next item the

[0:02:29] Trustee Bernardo: administrative coordination section of the agenda at 6.1 i see we have the draft minutes of previous

[0:02:35] Trustee Bernardo: meetings to consider uh we have the minutes of the october 18 2023 meeting which i was not in

[0:02:44] Trustee Bernardo: attendance unfortunately do we have any comments from any of the trustees about the contents of

[0:02:50] Trustee Bernardo: those minutes whether they would like to see any um corrections

[0:02:54] Voice 8: adjustments additions anything like

[0:02:56] Voice 8: that i see at least one trustee is thumbs up are there any other

[0:03:04] Trustee Bernardo: comments with that i'm going to

[0:03:07] Trustee Bernardo: take it that the uh the minutes have been uh accepted and approved uh by general consent

[0:03:16] Trustee Bernardo: uh we now move on to resolutions about meeting of which there are none to consider we have the

[0:03:21] Trustee Bernardo: follow-up action list for review this

[0:03:27] Voice 8: is a standard

[0:03:30] Trustee Bernardo: ritual in all of these meetings where

[0:03:32] Trustee Bernardo: we sort of go back to the list of outstanding items

[0:03:35] Voice 8: that are to be pursued if anybody wants

[0:03:42] Voice 8: to discuss that

[0:03:43] Trustee Bernardo: uh they may and i see now uh we're seeing some life amongst the committee matters

[0:03:48] Trustee Bernardo: members we finally cut their interest trustee patrick good

[0:03:52] Trustee Patrick: morning chair um i just have a

[0:03:55] Trustee Patrick: question regarding the first item um from february uh 22 um the possibility of of uh

[0:04:03] Trustee Patrick: reviewing cost recovery and the building permit reviews that was uh still staying in progress but

[0:04:09] Trustee Patrick: if there's any update on that and

[0:04:13] Trustee Bernardo: that's a specific question assume you have a staff

[0:04:15] Trustee Bernardo: and that you would probably like uh the cao to answer is that right

[0:04:22] Trustee Bernardo: yes yes yes mr chair uh mr hudson biller could you please uh respond to the trustee's uh inquiry

[0:04:30] Voice 19: no work has been done on this item mr chair i don't anticipate work will ever be done on it

[0:04:35] Voice 19: unfortunately it's well down my priority list it was a request from a number of years ago to

[0:04:43] Voice 19: investigate the potential for charging for building permit review across the islands trust

[0:04:53] Voice 19: two options were provided to the committee at the time one was to seek legislative change because we

[0:04:58] Voice 19: don't have the ability to seek these funds the second was tasking me to go out and meet with

[0:05:03] Voice 19: the every chief administrative and regional district board within the trust area so that

[0:05:08] Voice 19: would be seven and for me to come up with an individual financial agreements whereby they

[0:05:16] Voice 19: would charge on our behalf and then get we would remit back I met with several of those CAOs in

[0:05:25] Voice 19: the past half of them have either moved on to other jobs or retired meaning I will need to do

[0:05:32] Voice 19: it again the net benefit financial financially is marginal at this point half of them said

[0:05:38] Voice 19: sounds good half of them didn't um i would need to go to their electoral areas committees and

[0:05:44] Voice 19: convince them that this is a good idea uh i don't have the time to do this sir um are you

[0:05:52] Trustee Bernardo: with all that explanation you provided it correct me if i'm wrong but i'm also getting the impression

[0:05:57] Trustee Bernardo: that apart from not having the time um you don't think it's a particularly as a practical matter

[0:06:04] Trustee Bernardo: or particularly fruitful use of your time and it's even if successful it wouldn't be likely to

[0:06:09] Trustee Bernardo: yield much revenue is that fair that's

[0:06:13] Voice 19: reasonably fair though i'm often wrong that is what i think

[0:06:19] Voice 19: with this but i think that the net activities and hours i'd put into this will not return you

[0:06:25] Voice 19: value at the end of the day is it a good idea overall it might be but there's um right now

[0:06:34] Voice 19: it's not it's i don't think it's returning a significant value sir well

[0:06:39] Trustee Bernardo: from that uh i take

[0:06:41] Trustee Bernardo: it that we have a genuine question here about whether or not this item should remain on the

[0:06:45] Trustee Bernardo: follow-up action list or whether we should just spike it because um it's not worth the effort from

[0:06:52] Trustee Bernardo: what we're hearing uh from staff uh well we'll just park that slot for the moment we have other

[0:06:57] Trustee Bernardo: hands up um uh trustee evans thank

[0:07:02] Voice 9: you so that explanation actually answered my question which

[0:07:05] Voice 9: which was what is option a but it raised another question of where did this come from did this come

[0:07:11] Voice 9: from trust council and if so does this need to be reported back to trust council if it came from

[0:07:16] Voice 9: this committee um do we then look at removing it from the list so depending on those answers

[0:07:23] Voice 9: i think something should be done um given the the response we've just received from

[0:07:31] Voice 9: the cao that's

[0:07:34] Trustee Bernardo: an excellent question ceo if you could briefly uh respond to that little factual

[0:07:38] Trustee Bernardo: question uh was this initiative uh prompted by trust council or is it a self-generated

[0:07:44] Trustee Bernardo: initiative from the financial planning committee it

[0:07:47] Voice 8: was self-generated thank you uh trustee yates

[0:07:53] Voice 3: um thank you chair bernardo i suggest as i am sure a few of us do that we remove it from

[0:08:00] Voice 3: from the activity list.

[0:08:03] Trustee Bernardo: All right, well, I suppose we could do that.

[0:08:07] Trustee Bernardo: Since that request I assume was originally provoked

[0:08:10] Trustee Bernardo: by a resolution, I expect in order to remove it,

[0:08:14] Trustee Bernardo: we'll need a motion and resolution and all that stuff.

[0:08:17] Trustee Bernardo: But I'm not gonna ask anybody to make that motion

[0:08:20] Trustee Bernardo: at

[0:08:21] Voice 8: this point, we have other hands up.

[0:08:23] Voice 8: Trustee Bowman.

[0:08:27] Voice 10: Yeah, I have a question about

[0:08:28] Voice 11: a different one.

[0:08:30] Voice 11: one it was the action from the last financial planning committee number six staff to investigate

[0:08:38] Trustee Bernardo: okay yeah but uh i'm going to try to sort of uh try to deal with things as efficiently possible

[0:08:45] Trustee Bernardo: i want you to keep your hand up because that's a separate issue that relates to the policy

[0:08:50] Trustee Bernardo: action list we need to deal with it so keep your hand up uh sure if trustee patrick uh or trustee

[0:08:57] Trustee Bernardo: Evans have further comments that relate to this particular item let's hear them now Trustee Patrick

[0:09:05] Trustee Patrick: yeah this is a bit more complicated and I don't think simply removing it is advisable it is also

[0:09:10] Trustee Patrick: was identified in the governance review report as an item staff report over 50 of their time

[0:09:16] Trustee Patrick: is spent responding to referrals building permits being a significant piece of that so this is

[0:09:22] Trustee Patrick: revenue that we are foregoing? And I think, well, CEO Hudson-Piller may be correct that it's a small

[0:09:29] Trustee Patrick: amount compared to what we're there, but we should probably have at least some number calculated as

[0:09:34] Trustee Patrick: to what are we foregoing if we do not pursue this any further?

[0:09:39] Trustee Bernardo: Well, foregoing is a tricky word. It

[0:09:43] Trustee Bernardo: assumes that we are entitled to, you know, it suggests or hints that we're entitled to the

[0:09:47] Trustee Bernardo: revenue in the first place. Whereas this is actually slightly different as I read it. It's

[0:09:52] Trustee Bernardo: It's cost recovery of a cost that's imposed on us by the building permit process, which

[0:09:56] Trustee Bernardo: is a different thing.

[0:09:57] Trustee Patrick: Oh, through a normal municipality, that would be recovering the cost as part of their building

[0:10:02] Trustee Patrick: permit fee.

[0:10:03] Trustee Patrick: Because we split the service in two, we are conducting a service on behalf of the regional

[0:10:09] Trustee Patrick: districts to do a review that they should be doing themselves.

[0:10:12] Trustee Patrick: So this is, like I said, it's quite complicated.

[0:10:15] Voice 19: Well, I would say that many regional districts just fold it into the planning service, and

[0:10:19] Voice 19: it's not part of the building fee structure so half of the regional districts sort of do it that

[0:10:25] Voice 19: way meaning we currently pay for it because that's our job um with our planning service

[0:10:31] Voice 19: uh the planning service we have now and that was the question that was posed to me well what would

[0:10:35] Voice 19: your planners be doing um and some indeed have it on the building side um the building permit review

[0:10:42] Voice 19: view cost recovery side some don't charge discreetly

[0:10:45] Voice 8: for it at all press the ovens um

[0:10:51] Voice 10: so

[0:10:53] Voice 10: yeah

[0:10:54] Voice 9: i was going to make a motion to remove it is there um a future action report that this could be

[0:11:02] Voice 9: moved to for future work and taking it off the current one and if not then i will make a motion

[0:11:10] Voice 9: and if this is something that should be brought back then it can be brought back at a later time

[0:11:14] Voice 9: perhaps when there's staff availability

[0:11:16] Voice 8: to look into it if that's redirected i have a related

[0:11:25] Trustee Bernardo: question the question i assume is is directed really to staff and therefore the ceo to answer

[0:11:30] Trustee Bernardo: it but i have a related uh question that touches on that uh the action item here is stated in terms

[0:11:41] Trustee Bernardo: of explore option a for building permit review cost recovery i don't know what option a is but

[0:11:46] Trustee Bernardo: but presumably that was from the tenor of the discussion here.

[0:11:50] Trustee Bernardo: This is, you know, as the CEO explained,

[0:11:53] Trustee Bernardo: making overtures to these different regional districts

[0:11:57] Trustee Bernardo: in order to explore the possibility of cost recovery

[0:12:00] Trustee Bernardo: and getting, frankly, a piece of the fee they charge

[0:12:04] Trustee Bernardo: with respect to building permits.

[0:12:07] Trustee Bernardo: Are there other options apart from that?

[0:12:11] Trustee Bernardo: To

[0:12:11] Voice 9: the point of the chair,

[0:12:13] Voice 9: I had actually got a question on the floor

[0:12:15] Voice 9: which hasn't been answered yet.

[0:12:16] Voice 9: Yes,

[0:12:16] Trustee Bernardo: I know that, Trustee Evans. And the question I'm raising is related to your question, which is whether or not we can basically put it off in some other list. And my question relates to the content of what we're putting off. We've heard from the CEO

[0:12:32] Trustee Bernardo: that it's not realistic, frankly, to pursue cost recovery from regional districts.

[0:12:37] Trustee Bernardo: The question I'm asking is, if we do kick this down the road and say, look, we still want to explore this, are there other options that we can explore to recover this revenue apart from approaching the regional districts?

[0:12:53] Trustee Bernardo: So with that complicated, weighted down set of questions,

[0:12:57] Voice 8: CEO, could you please respond?

[0:13:00] Voice 19: Yes.

[0:13:02] Voice 19: I have a recommendation to you.

[0:13:05] Voice 19: It is to start over with exactly that.

[0:13:08] Voice 19: this as it stands right now it means nothing to this committee so why don't we do something like

[0:13:14] Voice 19: target april 2024 um or some time in the in when the dust is settled a little bit i'll back up a

[0:13:25] Voice 19: bit and do a more comprehensive review around um the options of the premise underneath this in the

[0:13:30] Voice 19: first place and then you can decide whether um which is your is the is the best action for the

[0:13:35] Voice 19: organization so you could just change the date from august 2023 to some other time in the future

[0:13:44] Voice 19: that gives me a little runway and then um revisit the the entire question and

[0:13:49] Trustee Bernardo: at that point you

[0:13:50] Trustee Bernardo: have you're saying you would have uh other options to present to us in terms of um

[0:13:55] Trustee Bernardo: how we can address this issue yeah

[0:13:57] Voice 19: and in fact um i think this is as we contemplate asking

[0:14:04] Voice 19: the province to reconsider some elements of the trust this is the kind of thing that would be one

[0:14:10] Voice 19: of those things to think about and that is um our ability to charge fees and for what all right well

[0:14:16] Trustee Bernardo: the suggestion from the ceo is that we uh change the target date uh in order to enable him to do

[0:14:20] Trustee Bernardo: as he has just said do you have any comments about that i see trustee bowman you have your hand up

[0:14:25] Trustee Bernardo: i'm assuming it's about this item uh

[0:14:28] Voice 11: yeah i support what russ has proposed but i have two

[0:14:32] Voice 11: two other things to add in in that consideration is um the crd were asked by the southern gulf

[0:14:40] Voice 11: islands or they to investigate i think it's called what is it a building no site and

[0:14:47] Voice 11: use permit system

[0:14:49] Voice 19: citing a use permit yeah

[0:14:51] Voice 11: and that might have an impact on this and then the

[0:14:54] Voice 11: The second thing is that recently on Saturna, we became aware of the fact that this new ALC process,

[0:15:04] Voice 11: which requires the local government to do all the pre-work and make the application on behalf of the applicant,

[0:15:12] Voice 11: there's no cost recovered for that.

[0:15:15] Voice 11: And that seems to have been a significant piece of work.

[0:15:17] Voice 11: so the applicant pays $1,500 to the ALC or in fact the Islands Trust has now got to pay it on

[0:15:25] Voice 11: their behalf and recover it but no funds come to the Islands Trust at all for the work involved

[0:15:33] Voice 11: in preparing that application so just for consideration in the same pot it may all come

[0:15:40] Voice 11: to nothing but there are two other angles that need to be considered thanks

[0:15:46] Voice 8: thank you trustee

[0:15:48] Voice 8: elliott thank

[0:15:50] Trustee Elliott: you chair um so could we expand this request to research agreements with regional

[0:15:55] Trustee Elliott: districts in general related to business licensing potential for instance limiting or regulating stvr

[0:16:07] Trustee Elliott: are short-term vacation rentals the new program announced by the province many regional districts

[0:16:12] Trustee Elliott: are not or electoral areas are not able to participate that could change in the future

[0:16:17] Trustee Elliott: and so if business licensing is developed in that realm an agreement with the regional district to

[0:16:25] Trustee Elliott: handle the funds and as well for housing supports we've been talking about this for a long time so

[0:16:32] Trustee Elliott: So there's going to be different, as the CAO pointed out, the seven regional districts are going to have different approaches, either for collecting the MRDT tax or the business licensing idea or this building permit review cost recovery.

[0:16:47] Trustee Elliott: But all of these servicing agreements where we can't recover the cost, the regional district may have an appetite or want to partner with us.

[0:16:58] Trustee Elliott: that's an area of exploration I think in terms of our in cooperation with mandates so

[0:17:05] Trustee Elliott: perhaps it could be expanded to seeking agreement with regional districts on

[0:17:12] Trustee Elliott: related costs and business licensing to do with servicing that we can't provide

[0:17:21] Voice 8: well you make some interesting points but trustee Elliott

[0:17:28] Trustee Bernardo: but we're dealing here with

[0:17:31] Trustee Bernardo: a position the FPC has taken that is on just a specific issue of cost recovery for building

[0:17:38] Trustee Bernardo: permit reviews. Expanding it changes the tenor and the purpose of the whole thing.

[0:17:44] Trustee Bernardo: We've already heard from the CEO that, frankly, approaching the regional districts for

[0:17:50] Trustee Bernardo: cost recovery at all seems a very steep climb. Before expanding it, it would seem to me that

[0:17:59] Trustee Bernardo: all the items you've raised are important but it might require a fuller discussion at some other

[0:18:06] Trustee Bernardo: time with the fpc um to propose that specific line of work separate from this narrower issue

[0:18:15] Trustee Bernardo: that we're dealing with here let's just agree

[0:18:17] Trustee Elliott: so if i could respond it's about the agreements

[0:18:20] Trustee Elliott: with regional districts not necessarily

[0:18:22] Trustee Elliott: the content and those could relate to several

[0:18:25] Trustee Elliott: different streams of what would this look like in this regional district but having the if you're

[0:18:31] Trustee Elliott: having the converse if the ceo is having a conversation about um building cost recovery

[0:18:37] Trustee Elliott: with a regional district why not have that conversation about two or three other areas

[0:18:42] Trustee Elliott: where there might be alignment for cooperation but agree not a conversation for this fpc right now

[0:18:50] Trustee Elliott: just suggesting that we could expand the scope because it's all about intergovernmental

[0:18:55] Trustee Elliott: agreements to support the services all

[0:19:00] Trustee Bernardo: right thank you for that clarification

[0:19:01] Trustee Bernardo: ceo to whatever extent it's feasible for you to explore that avenue as you are elaborating on

[0:19:11] Trustee Bernardo: different options for cost recovery for building permits um uh well you've heard the request from

[0:19:18] Trustee Bernardo: trustee elliott she would appreciate it if you could roll that into your exploration and uh

[0:19:24] Trustee Bernardo: if we do go along with the idea of reporting back in april on this point then you could report back

[0:19:30] Trustee Bernardo: at that time uh trustee harris

[0:19:33] Voice 8: in a perfect world can you hear me any chance yes

[0:19:38] Voice 8: yes thank you

[0:19:39] Voice 6: i feel i'm in support of axing this at the moment um honestly the islands trust

[0:19:48] Voice 6: trust to many should never have gotten involved in the building permit review at all um and

[0:19:56] Voice 6: and actually since we've just had at last trust council a definition of the mandate in section

[0:20:02] Voice 6: three in particular um being involved in the building permit review actually hinders

[0:20:07] Voice 6: housing uh and livelihoods of the people that are involved in building the housing

[0:20:15] Voice 6: and the spinoffs from that but um it's to me it's been a big political boondoggle and i'm in all for

[0:20:22] Voice 6: um you know axing this at this point and hopefully we will get rid of the bill from a review

[0:20:29] Voice 6: um at some point in a perfect world

[0:20:31] Trustee Bernardo: thank you so we now have two options that are that are live

[0:20:36] Trustee Bernardo: before the committee one is uh a return to the idea of spiking the thing just getting rid of it

[0:20:41] Trustee Bernardo: The other one is kicking it down the road in order to give the CEO an opportunity to develop a more feasible approach and cost recovery.

[0:20:52] Trustee Bernardo: Those are the two options. I just point out that we're not going to be doing either one until somebody makes a motion along those lines.

[0:20:58] Trustee Bernardo: But before that happens, we have other comments. Trustee Luckham.

[0:21:04] Trustee Luckham: Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you, everybody, for the input so far.

[0:21:12] Trustee Luckham: We are far from an ideal and perfect world here at the Islands Trust and it's not

[0:21:17] Trustee Luckham: the fact that we don't make every effort to. I think that sometimes there's a lack of

[0:21:24] Trustee Luckham: understanding or interest in participating in that perfect world with the Islands Trust.

[0:21:31] Trustee Luckham: I just want to make a, I would be in favor of taking this off the list until such time

[0:21:38] Trustee Luckham: as this financial planning committee wants to delve into this topic further.

[0:21:43] Trustee Luckham: And I just would like to say that this is a really big rabbit hole.

[0:21:47] Trustee Luckham: Like, I think Volkswagen rabbits fall into this hole.

[0:21:50] Trustee Luckham: That's how big it is.

[0:21:51] Trustee Luckham: Because not all LTCs have agreements or protocol agreements with regional districts to start

[0:21:56] Trustee Luckham: with.

[0:21:58] Trustee Luckham: Many regional districts are not interested in it because it's a lot of work for them

[0:22:03] Trustee Luckham: and don't understand it.

[0:22:05] Trustee Luckham: But at the same time, I think that the building permit review is important because what the

[0:22:12] Trustee Luckham: Part of the reason this all came about was because the regional districts were not respecting the local bylaws in the processing of building permits by issuing building permits that did not meet the bylaws to do with building height and coverage and the like.

[0:22:33] Trustee Luckham: And so if they're not going to do the work, then the notion was is that we should.

[0:22:38] Trustee Luckham: But, you know, I'm just going to go with the flow here at the moment and just say that I would move that the Financial Planning Committee remove item number one from the follow-up action list until it's such time that Financial Planning Committee formulates a strategy for addressing broader building permit issues in the Islanders Trust.

[0:23:04] Voice 8: I'll second that.

[0:23:06] Voice 8: Susan.

[0:23:07] Trustee Bernardo: Okay.

[0:23:08] Trustee Bernardo: Okay, we have a motion on the floor to remove the item.

[0:23:13] Trustee Bernardo: We now enter into the discussion of it.

[0:23:17] Trustee Bernardo: I see Trustee Patrick has her hand up.

[0:23:20] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, I think from this discussion,

[0:23:22] Trustee Patrick: I think you can see that this is far more complicated

[0:23:24] Trustee Patrick: than a simple issue.

[0:23:27] Trustee Patrick: So this is a recommendation in the governance report.

[0:23:29] Trustee Patrick: At this time, the Islands Trust is supplementing development

[0:23:32] Trustee Patrick: using taxpayers' funds.

[0:23:34] Trustee Patrick: We are not capturing revenue

[0:23:36] Trustee Patrick: that is potentially due to us

[0:23:39] Trustee Patrick: and the entire program should be looked at

[0:23:42] Trustee Patrick: and just simply ignoring this is like I said,

[0:23:44] Trustee Patrick: continuing to supplement development in our islands

[0:23:49] Trustee Patrick: using taxpayer funds.

[0:23:54] Voice 8: Well, you've

[0:23:55] Trustee Bernardo: heard Trustee Patrick.

[0:23:56] Trustee Bernardo: I interpret what you said as opposition to the motion.

[0:24:00] Trustee Bernardo: Do we have any other comments?

[0:24:01] Trustee Bernardo: Anybody else wants to speak to it?

[0:24:02] Trustee Bernardo: I

[0:24:03] Voice 8: see Trustee Harris has a hand up.

[0:24:06] Voice 8: Thank you.

[0:24:07] Voice 8: i would

[0:24:08] Voice 6: be in favor of that if we were to um amend it to say um you know remove from the

[0:24:14] Voice 6: follow-up action list um forever instead of uh until a later date and then maybe a second

[0:24:22] Voice 6: amendment or our second motion where we would recommend trust council dissolve the uh island's

[0:24:29] Voice 6: trust's involvement

[0:24:30] Voice 8: in the building permit review process well i would uh make the the comment that

[0:24:42] Trustee Bernardo: without it my comment being interpreted being pro or anti the motion that by removing the motion

[0:24:50] Trustee Bernardo: doesn't or sorry removing this item from the follow-up action list doesn't eliminate um

[0:24:57] Trustee Bernardo: the possibility of fpc uh exploring this uh in a different fashion what we've heard is this

[0:25:05] Trustee Bernardo: narrow approach at item one uh isn't feasible from the ceo what i've heard is there's other

[0:25:12] Trustee Bernardo: of the trustees prominently trustee Patrick

[0:25:14] Trustee Bernardo: and trustee Elliot who view this as an element

[0:25:18] Trustee Bernardo: of a larger issue that needs to be explored

[0:25:20] Trustee Bernardo: with respect to the relationship

[0:25:21] Trustee Bernardo: with these regional districts

[0:25:22] Trustee Bernardo: and it does relate to cost or cover.

[0:25:27] Trustee Bernardo: It seems that there's actually a agreement here

[0:25:31] Trustee Bernardo: which is item one as written isn't working

[0:25:35] Trustee Bernardo: but if it was removed, I would be open to trustees

[0:25:41] Trustee Bernardo: is to bring the larger issue

[0:25:43] Trustee Bernardo: in a more developed fashion to FPC.

[0:25:48] Trustee Bernardo: And then, you know, after having that discussion,

[0:25:51] Trustee Bernardo: possibly have a motion and approve or get a resolution

[0:25:55] Trustee Bernardo: that explores a larger framework,

[0:26:00] Trustee Bernardo: a cost recovery framework and has other options.

[0:26:04] Trustee Bernardo: And that would tie in with what the CEO had talked before

[0:26:07] Trustee Bernardo: about presenting options to the

[0:26:12] Voice 8: FPC in April.

[0:26:14] Voice 8: That's just the point.

[0:26:17] Voice 8: Any further comments?

[0:26:22] Voice 8: Seeing none, I'm going to put this up for a vote.

[0:26:25] Voice 8: All of those up in favor of removing this item,

[0:26:29] Voice 8: please raise your hands.

[0:26:37] Voice 8: Do we have those votes accounted for?

[0:26:43] Voice 8: All right, please lower your hands.

[0:26:45] Voice 8: All those who are opposed to the motion,

[0:26:49] Voice 8: please raise your hands.

[0:26:53] Voice 8: all right i see two uh it appears the motion passes uh

[0:26:56] Trustee Bernardo: the items removed but uh as i pointed

[0:27:00] Trustee Bernardo: out before that's not the necessarily the end of the the discussion um it's open to trustees to

[0:27:06] Trustee Bernardo: bring it back to the fpc in a more developed and perhaps a more feasible fashion and you heard the

[0:27:13] Trustee Bernardo: ceo he's available to help with that um uh any other let's return now uh trustee boland you

[0:27:23] Trustee Bernardo: You actually had a comment about a different item

[0:27:25] Trustee Bernardo: on this follow-up action list.

[0:27:27] Trustee Bernardo: So back

[0:27:28] Voice 11: to you now.

[0:27:31] Voice 11: So my question was about number six,

[0:27:37] Voice 11: staff to investigate pursuing the provisions

[0:27:39] Voice 11: of section two about the funding request.

[0:27:45] Trustee Bernardo: Just a moment, Trustee Boland,

[0:27:48] Trustee Bernardo: just so to make sure that we see it's actually

[0:27:51] Trustee Bernardo: on the screen here.

[0:27:53] Voice 8: page four of four so okay i see item six yeah staff to investigate pursuing

[0:28:04] Trustee Bernardo: a provision of

[0:28:04] Trustee Bernardo: second 2.1.1 is that it yeah

[0:28:07] Voice 8: all

[0:28:08] Trustee Bernardo: right thank you please proceed

[0:28:10] Voice 11: sure um so that was to be

[0:28:14] Voice 11: as far as i understood a very informal approach to you know not necessarily the minister

[0:28:21] Voice 11: and i got the feeling and that it could be done sooner than that but i have another question

[0:28:28] Voice 11: related which was um you know in the discussion about the provincial you know request to the

[0:28:35] Voice 11: province etc in i think august there was discussion about ubcm and then there was a discussion about

[0:28:41] Voice 11: the fact that it wouldn't be practical then but there was a request to go for a uh an appointment

[0:28:48] Voice 11: with the Minister of Municipal Affairs sometime in, I thought, late October.

[0:28:57] Voice 11: And I just wondered if there was a response to that request

[0:29:01] Voice 11: and if there was a response if this action item could be put on the table then.

[0:29:11] Voice 11: So was there a response?

[0:29:13] Voice 11: Is there a day planned or an appointment, and could we put this request forward at that

[0:29:21] Voice 11: appointment if it exists?

[0:29:23] Voice 11: Thanks.

[0:29:25] Trustee Bernardo: I'm hearing a request for an update on what's happening here and a sense of urgency that

[0:29:31] Trustee Bernardo: we push it ahead with respect to this follow-up action item.

[0:29:35] Trustee Bernardo: them um could we have a director of trust services or cl respond to the the question is

[0:29:43] Trustee Bernardo: the basic question is i'll

[0:29:45] Voice 19: do my best go

[0:29:47] Voice 15: ahead cl uh

[0:29:49] Voice 19: no we actually ended up getting a meeting

[0:29:51] Voice 19: with the minister at ubcm which is fairly rare so we don't have a scheduled meeting in october

[0:29:57] Voice 19: nor is one being asked for um and

[0:29:59] Voice 19: And.

[0:30:00] Voice 19: and we would make these investigations as per the dates prescribed here oh

[0:30:05] Voice 11: and do we have did we

[0:30:07] Voice 11: have a feedback on the discussions at that meeting or will we have a trust council well we discussed

[0:30:14] Voice 19: it a bit at the last trust council meeting in the updates by the chair and others but certainly oh

[0:30:21] Voice 19: we can I believe there's some notes are being collated associated with that they were very

[0:30:28] Voice 19: much focused on um key elements associated with uh capacity funding and reconciliation actions

[0:30:35] Voice 19: when we spoke with the minister we have notes that described as the meetings and so forth but

[0:30:40] Voice 19: this topic speaking to your original point was not a part

[0:30:44] Voice 19: of that discussion and

[0:30:46] Voice 11: you know we

[0:30:48] Voice 11: did talk about the fact that you might be able to make an informal approach to colleagues not

[0:30:54] Voice 11: necessarily the Minister to feel out this possibility. Is that still how you're planning to

[0:31:04] Voice 11: approach it? Yes.

[0:31:06] Voice 10: Okay thank you.

[0:31:10] Trustee Bernardo: I see the target date for this is actually not that far away,

[0:31:13] Trustee Bernardo: it's the end of the month, January 2024. It's a very general action item which is

[0:31:20] Trustee Bernardo: basically investigate

[0:31:21] Voice 8: pursuing provisions of the funding or the grant program.

[0:31:30] Trustee Bernardo: What I haven't heard is what the prospects are of what we've done to date, getting us any more revenue.

[0:31:37] Trustee Bernardo: Could you tell us about that, CEO?

[0:31:40] Trustee Bernardo: What is it?

[0:31:41] Trustee Bernardo: Are we making any progress here?

[0:31:43] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, by the end of January, are you going to be in a position to report back on what is feasible with respect to getting

[0:31:53] Voice 8: this additional funding and what isn't?

[0:31:56] Voice 8: I don't think so.

[0:31:59] Voice 8: So I

[0:32:01] Voice 19: was going to investigate this question here

[0:32:04] Voice 19: as described using those particular articles

[0:32:09] Voice 19: in the protocol agreements between our bodies.

[0:32:13] Trustee Bernardo: But my question is, what does the investigation yield?

[0:32:17] Trustee Bernardo: Like, are

[0:32:17] Voice 8: you in a position now to tell us

[0:32:21] Voice 8: that you've investigated this area?

[0:32:27] Voice 8: No, I'm not.

[0:32:29] Voice 8: No.

[0:32:30] Voice 8: I'm sorry.

[0:32:30] Voice 8: So that's still in progress.

[0:32:34] Voice 8: It is.

[0:32:36] Voice 8: And you will be

[0:32:38] Trustee Bernardo: in a position to report at the end of January.

[0:32:40] Trustee Bernardo: Is that right?

[0:32:42] Voice 19: I'll do my level best, sir.

[0:32:44] Voice 19: Yes, that's the date that is being described here.

[0:32:47] Voice 19: Didn't this come at our last meeting, October 18th, 2023?

[0:32:54] Voice 19: Yes, it's on

[0:32:54] Voice 19: the work plan.

[0:32:58] Trustee Bernardo: Well, you

[0:32:59] Voice 19: have the advantage of it.

[0:33:00] Trustee Bernardo: It wasn't present for that meeting, unfortunately.

[0:33:02] Trustee Bernardo: All right, CEOs answered the question.

[0:33:05] Trustee Bernardo: Do we have any other questions?

[0:33:08] Trustee Bernardo: points that any of the

[0:33:09] Voice 8: trustees want to raise with respect to the follow-up action list all right

[0:33:19] Voice 8: let's move on to the next item uh the actual uh business

[0:33:23] Trustee Bernardo: so the work program items that takes us

[0:33:28] Trustee Bernardo: to item 7.1

[0:33:30] Voice 8: and uh this is a request that um

[0:33:37] Trustee Bernardo: fbc approved the forwarding of the september 30

[0:33:40] Trustee Bernardo: 2023 financial report to Trust Council for it to approve.

[0:33:47] Trustee Bernardo: So perhaps

[0:33:47] Voice 8: we could have Director Mott speak

[0:33:53] Trustee Bernardo: to this item, please.

[0:33:57] Voice 2: Happy to, Chair.

[0:33:58] Voice 2: I'll keep my comments brief.

[0:33:59] Voice 2: Of course, our quarterly reports

[0:34:01] Voice 2: are just standard reporting items.

[0:34:03] Voice 2: They follow the same format every quarter.

[0:34:06] Voice 2: So hopefully the committee is getting familiar

[0:34:07] Voice 2: with these reports.

[0:34:09] Voice 2: At the end of quarter two,

[0:34:11] Voice 2: we are six months into the fiscal year so that's displaying six months of spending so our benchmark

[0:34:17] Voice 2: is 50 percent of the budget spent that's where we would expect to be in most areas of spending

[0:34:22] Voice 2: what we're seeing for the islands trust at six months in is a net spending of 46 percent of the

[0:34:28] Voice 2: annual approved budget so we are slightly under spending against the approved budget for this

[0:34:33] Voice 2: year. Our revenues are slightly higher than the 50% benchmark. That's not unusual as of course

[0:34:41] Voice 2: we receive all of our property tax revenues early in the year. We are also seeing higher fees and

[0:34:46] Voice 2: sales application revenue coming in with higher application volumes than anticipated at budget

[0:34:51] Voice 2: time and also our investment income is remaining high as interest rates have remained high which is

[0:34:56] Voice 2: is great. Council services is showing lower than expected spending by 2%, which is not significant.

[0:35:06] Voice 2: Planning services is showing lower than expected spending by $345,000 or 5%. And that's primarily

[0:35:13] Voice 2: due to underspending on planning projects as well as underspending on planning staff salaries due

[0:35:19] Voice 2: to vacancies. And that overspending is offset slightly by some overspending in the LTC budgets,

[0:35:25] Voice 2: which is primarily due to the continued use of minute takers

[0:35:29] Voice 2: for local trust committees due to the delay

[0:35:32] Voice 2: in hiring the LCC meeting administrator.

[0:35:35] Voice 2: The Islands Trust Conservancy is very close

[0:35:38] Voice 2: to where we would expect them to be this year,

[0:35:40] Voice 2: just under expected by 2%, so nothing significant there.

[0:35:44] Voice 2: And general administration is lower than expected

[0:35:47] Voice 2: by about 4%, so nothing unusual going on there either.

[0:35:51] Voice 2: The slight underspending is also due to delays

[0:35:54] Voice 2: in hiring of new staff.

[0:35:57] Voice 2: The chart on page 19 of the agenda shows the same spending in a different format, so this is our spending by object, which can help us see which areas are sort of close to that 50% benchmark that we would expect and which are under or over.

[0:36:13] Voice 2: We do have a report coming up that talks to some of the areas of overspending and the areas of underspending are primarily those already identified underspending on projects and salaries.

[0:36:23] Voice 2: I can happily take questions if there are any.

[0:36:28] Voice 8: I see Trustee Evans has her hand up.

[0:36:29] Voice 8: Thank you.

[0:36:31] Voice 9: I have a question on page 16 regarding the legal cost recovery.

[0:36:36] Voice 9: And I apologize for my whining dog.

[0:36:40] Voice 9: So can you confirm what costs are recovered?

[0:36:44] Voice 9: I understand you said that we're seeing legal costs for these proceedings and we'll see

[0:36:49] Voice 9: costs recovered.

[0:36:50] Voice 9: As I understand it, when we're awarded costs, it's just the court costs.

[0:36:54] Voice 9: It's not the legal lawyer costs.

[0:36:58] Voice 9: Is my understanding there correct? Because I'm just wondering how much we are expecting. I noticed further down you're anticipating $30,000 to come back, but I just wanted to understand how or where that cost recovery comes from. Thank you.

[0:37:15] Voice 9: I

[0:37:16] Voice 2: believe it's specific to each case. In these particular cases, I'd be looking to the

[0:37:21] Voice 2: Director of Planning Services to speak to what costs exactly are being recovered. It could

[0:37:26] Voice 2: potentially be our legal costs as well as court costs. If the Director of Planning Services has

[0:37:32] Voice 2: more info on that, that would be great. I think he's online today.

[0:37:38] Voice 20: I apologize. Could you repeat the question?

[0:37:42] Voice 9: Sure. So

[0:37:43] Voice 8: when we're looking...

[0:37:54] Voice 8: Hello, Chelsea Allen.

[0:37:56] Voice 8: the the

[0:37:56] Voice 9: bylaw stuff and all that lot i'm assuming um as far as i understood it uh you don't normally

[0:38:03] Voice 9: get to recover your lawyer costs because your lawyer is the person that you chose but you do

[0:38:10] Voice 9: get to recover your court costs for the filing and things like that um is that correct um is that what

[0:38:17] Voice 9: you're going after because i did see a number of 30 000 further on in the document i was just

[0:38:22] Voice 9: wondering what comprised of that anticipated thirty thousand dollars yeah

[0:38:27] Voice 20: sorry i don't have

[0:38:27] Voice 20: the exact information in front of me but i think you have the general idea right that um we we

[0:38:32] Voice 20: don't recover things like um yeah you know um photocopying costs and similar incidental type um

[0:38:41] Voice 20: costs but that's the best i could do right now and i'd have to dig into that to be more specific i

[0:38:45] Voice 19: think david could help us out mr chair just some specifics around that

[0:38:49] Voice 1: yeah uh

[0:38:50] Voice 1: yeah through the

[0:38:51] Voice 1: chair yes the way it works when you go to the bc supreme court um if you're successful there's a

[0:38:59] Voice 1: what's called a scale uh there's different scales and the judge will usually just use the basic

[0:39:04] Voice 1: scale but if certain things happen in court there's different higher skills that the judge

[0:39:10] Voice 1: can then award back to you uh generally it works out it's not very much it's usually around 10

[0:39:15] Voice 1: percent of uh what we actually ended up spending on the court cases and it's all negotiable um we

[0:39:22] Voice 1: would have to submit certain expenses and the other side could dispute them and then eventually

[0:39:28] Voice 1: would settle on whatever the amount would be so it's some but nowhere near all of the cost

[0:39:35] Voice 1: and it's usually the court cost it's not usually our lawyer cost

[0:39:41] Voice 9: perfect thank you so

[0:39:41] Voice 8: much that's what i thought thank you trustee yates um thank you chair

[0:39:50] Voice 3: bernardo i just have a question for um director mobs but it relates to the financial forecast so

[0:39:56] Voice 3: i might be just a little bit ahead here is that okay um

[0:40:02] Voice 8: let's

[0:40:04] Trustee Bernardo: uh trustee yates i'm gonna ask you

[0:40:06] Trustee Bernardo: to just put that um that question on hold yeah and uh the financial forecast is a a different

[0:40:14] Trustee Bernardo: item let's deal with this yeah and

[0:40:16] Trustee Bernardo: clean it up just deal with it and then move on to that yeah

[0:40:20] Trustee Bernardo: director mobs and perhaps we could have the screen go back to the little um little table that has uh

[0:40:28] Trustee Bernardo: a breakdown of uh generally of these expenditures uh it's pretty clear that uh

[0:40:37] Trustee Bernardo: we're kind of more or less on track with what we expected expenditures would be

[0:40:44] Trustee Bernardo: uh in some areas but in other areas uh it's pretty out of whack um and i can ask you a question it's

[0:40:55] Trustee Bernardo: hard to answer which is like what's going on here because when i look at programs we're like

[0:41:00] Trustee Bernardo: we're at 17 percent uh and that's 17 percent of 872 000 dollars uh that's severe underspending

[0:41:10] Trustee Bernardo: which suggests that we have a problem in being able to execute those programs then you go to legal

[0:41:18] Trustee Bernardo: and okay statutory notices are on track but everything else is way over we're well over

[0:41:27] Trustee Bernardo: 100 on general legal issues and bylaw enforcement litigation we're up at 85 that's a separate issue

[0:41:35] Trustee Bernardo: sure it sounds and i have a specific question with respect to that is um is

[0:41:43] Voice 8: this an extraordinary

[0:41:44] Voice 8: thing to see uh in terms

[0:41:47] Trustee Bernardo: of exceeding our budgeted amount for legal overall or is this a thing that

[0:41:53] Trustee Bernardo: we're going to that we've seen from time to time occasional annual spikes but then we revert to a

[0:42:01] Trustee Bernardo: kind of a mean we're kind of more or less on track with the budget the reason i'm asking which is

[0:42:06] Trustee Bernardo: is that if we're consistently seeing that we're overspending on the amount that we've allocated

[0:42:15] Trustee Bernardo: in the budget for this, maybe we need to reconsider how we approach the funding of

[0:42:22] Trustee Bernardo: our legal expenses. So that's kind of a, and then of course, if you look at the chart again,

[0:42:29] Trustee Bernardo: you've got the travel and training and recruitment, we're at 75%. So I'm asking for

[0:42:34] Trustee Bernardo: for three separate explanations here

[0:42:36] Trustee Bernardo: as to what's going on with the underspending on programs,

[0:42:40] Trustee Bernardo: the overspending on the legal side

[0:42:41] Trustee Bernardo: and the overspending on the travel, et cetera.

[0:42:46] Voice 2: Okay, so I'll try to remember all those parts

[0:42:50] Voice 2: and work through them.

[0:42:51] Voice 2: So for program underspending,

[0:42:53] Voice 2: one of the primary drivers there is the underspending

[0:42:56] Voice 2: on local trust committee projects that we are seeing.

[0:42:59] Voice 2: So there's a couple of fairly significant dollar projects

[0:43:02] Voice 2: for a Salt Spring Island local trust committee

[0:43:03] Voice 2: that are not advancing at all this year.

[0:43:05] Voice 2: So the amount of spending on those projects is zero dollars. That's having an impact.

[0:43:10] Voice 2: The other reason that programming may not hit the benchmark that's sort of typical is due to the timing of program delivery.

[0:43:20] Voice 2: So there may be a project where it is, you know, the plan is for us to do less work in quarter one and two,

[0:43:27] Voice 2: because we have that slotted into quarter two and three timing and, you know, things like stewardship education.

[0:43:33] Voice 2: There might be more spending later on in the year. So there's various pieces of programming that may not happen on a straight line basis throughout the year that also has an impact.

[0:43:43] Voice 2: For legal, we do at times see spending that is not in line with budget because, of course, it's very difficult for us to predict claims that might come against us.

[0:43:53] Voice 2: And so we do sometimes have a budget that's based on historical spending and what we think might be coming forward based on current sort of actions by trust council and local trust committees, but we may just see an influx of claims come in in a year, or have one particular claim that has a lot more activity take place in a year that wasn't planned for and then we see legal costs rise.

[0:44:15] Voice 2: the only area that's a little more within our control for legal is legal general which we still

[0:44:20] Voice 2: see in overspending and that's due to decisions made by trust council executive committee other

[0:44:26] Voice 2: political bodies to pursue legal opinions so that's an area that's more within our control

[0:44:32] Voice 2: and we can look at how we budget and manage that budget moving forward we also do see and we'll

[0:44:40] Voice 2: we'll get to this in the forecast. We have overspending in many areas of legal. However,

[0:44:44] Voice 2: we are anticipating to have a cost recovery. So that's going to be netted against legal expense,

[0:44:49] Voice 2: which will bring the overall expense number at the end of the year back down to be closer to

[0:44:55] Voice 2: budget. We'll still land at overspending, but we'll be a bit closer. So those recoveries play

[0:45:00] Voice 2: a role as well. Travel training and recruitment. We saw some high costs incurred this current year

[0:45:07] Voice 2: for UBCM attendance by executive committee and some staff and another trustee. And so those

[0:45:13] Voice 2: costs are a driver for why we are over the 50% benchmark there. Of course, timing of training,

[0:45:19] Voice 2: again, plays a role in this line. We may see more training happen earlier on in the fiscal year than

[0:45:24] Voice 2: later. And so we'd see more spending early on. Hopefully that helps, but I can clarify anything

[0:45:29] Voice 2: if you

[0:45:30] Voice 8: need it. I know that's very helpful. And, you

[0:45:37] Trustee Bernardo: know, just as a very basic point,

[0:45:39] Trustee Bernardo: the value of these numbers is that they should inform

[0:45:44] Trustee Bernardo: how we manage our operations.

[0:45:46] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, they raise questions about whether or not

[0:45:49] Trustee Bernardo: there are things we can do to improve

[0:45:52] Trustee Bernardo: and make more efficient how we do things.

[0:45:54] Trustee Bernardo: Since I have a legal background,

[0:45:56] Trustee Bernardo: I look at the $70,000 we spend on general legal

[0:46:01] Trustee Bernardo: and the 80,000 spent on bylaw enforcement,

[0:46:04] Trustee Bernardo: you know, $150,000, you're getting,

[0:46:07] Trustee Bernardo: you're definitely in the range and this is at the half this is actually at the 50 percent

[0:46:15] Trustee Bernardo: stage of the budget at 150 000 you're in the range where you could hire the right in-house

[0:46:22] Trustee Bernardo: council to handle all that stuff and more so

[0:46:25] Voice 8: that's a thought uh in any event uh trustee bowman

[0:46:28] Voice 8: thanks

[0:46:32] Voice 10: um

[0:46:33] Voice 11: i'm very concerned about the programs under spending because that's our core business

[0:46:39] Voice 11: business and to me and if I read you know both the note here about staff salaries we seem to be

[0:46:48] Voice 11: in a situation where we have very high or okay very high is probably I can't make that judgment

[0:46:55] Voice 11: call but we have a high vacancy rate and a high turnover and a high you know we've had people on

[0:47:01] Voice 11: stress leave so there's some something wrong with the way we are planning our activities and

[0:47:07] Voice 11: and allocating resources and if I read the business cases I don't really expect an answer

[0:47:13] Voice 11: here I just want to comment on this because I'll come back to it later every business case in the

[0:47:18] Voice 11: risk has the risk that there will not be resources to execute it and the consequence stress on the

[0:47:27] Voice 11: staff who are left to try and glue the pieces together and and it's very difficult to get out

[0:47:33] Voice 11: of a cycle like that as long as you don't actually prioritize and cut back on your activities

[0:47:41] Voice 11: so um you know i i appreciate the fact now that on this summary of the business cases

[0:47:48] Voice 11: um as requested at the last meeting it actually puts in the staff hours now it's not just in

[0:47:55] Voice 11: each business case it's actually on that higher level summary which helps and but i i really i

[0:48:02] Voice 11: I read some of the business case risks and the detail that's in there about the activities that are being done by not the person who should be hired to do it, but by other people who are having to pick up.

[0:48:16] Voice 11: And I think, you know, this is unsustainable and that there's a more important conversation to be had about the staff resource aspect of the work scope we are trying to do than about the money.

[0:48:35] Voice 11: You know, we argue about whether it should be 20,000 or 15,000, but there's a whole background of staff resources being overloaded by not having a really coherent, clear map of what we're trying to do and prioritising looking at that.

[0:49:00] Voice 11: And I certainly I have a motion which I'll bring forward later in our general discussion to say that the recommendation to trust council should be to really look at staff resources assigned to all of our programmes and prioritise in order to reduce the risk of not being able to move forward on the projects in that programme that we think are essential.

[0:49:26] Voice 11: And to me, those are the basic OCP and UB reviews.

[0:49:32] Voice 11: So I think there's a hard conversation about staff resources, given what we're looking at here, you know, the rate of vacancies and turnover that we're experiencing.

[0:49:42] Trustee Bernardo: Thank you, Trustee Boland. We've got your points.

[0:49:47] Trustee Bernardo: And all of your remarks are well taken.

[0:49:51] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, there's definitely things to discuss here.

[0:49:53] Trustee Bernardo: But, of course, it may be that the time for that conversation will be at Trust Council when this item, assuming we do, in fact, refer it to Trust Council, when this item comes up for discussion there, that may well be the right time to have that hard discussion.

[0:50:09] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Evans.

[0:50:12] Voice 9: Thank you.

[0:50:13] Voice 9: I have a favor to ask on page 21 and 22, the detailed statement of operations.

[0:50:20] Voice 9: iterations. Would it be possible in future iterations to have a column that shows the

[0:50:26] Voice 9: previous fiscal year's actual spend as well? I would find that very helpful to look at.

[0:50:33] Voice 9: So we've got the, we would have the actual spend, the approved budget, et cetera, et cetera.

[0:50:38] Voice 9: I just like to look at all of that information together to see how we're lining up to what was

[0:50:42] Voice 9: actually spent before versus what we budgeted. Because the budget is like our best guess as to

[0:50:48] Voice 9: what we're going to be spending and it's just really really helpful to have in most of these

[0:50:53] Voice 9: tables to show the actual spend from the previous fiscal could that be

[0:50:58] Voice 8: done director mobs yes again

[0:51:03] Voice 8: um i don't think we need a resolution to include add

[0:51:08] Trustee Bernardo: them there do we no

[0:51:10] Voice 2: we'll make sure to update

[0:51:11] Voice 2: the template um for quarter three and beyond thank

[0:51:14] Trustee Bernardo: you very much trustee patrick the project spending

[0:51:19] Trustee Patrick: This time of year, I mean, every time of year, it's always behind. And that's one of the reasons why I'm a huge proponent of the corporate planning process that we're working on, is to get the work aligned through department planning and other activities.

[0:51:31] Trustee Patrick: When we don't start planning a project until April 1st of every year, we're always behind, and it won't get better until we implement that new program.

[0:51:43] Trustee Bernardo: All right, thank you. In this discussion, we've entered into familiar territory and familiar issues are coming up.

[0:51:52] Trustee Bernardo: I think it may be helpful that we've done that

[0:51:54] Trustee Bernardo: to refresh our minds because we will end up

[0:51:58] Trustee Bernardo: having to discuss some of those points later on.

[0:52:02] Trustee Bernardo: But I think we've, I see Trustee Harris has got his hand up,

[0:52:06] Trustee Bernardo: but I'd like to move on if we can,

[0:52:09] Trustee Bernardo: and we can keep all those points in mind.

[0:52:11] Trustee Bernardo: But Trustee Harris, don't worry,

[0:52:13] Trustee Bernardo: you're going to get your chance.

[0:52:16] Trustee Bernardo: And after we hear from Trustee Harris,

[0:52:18] Trustee Bernardo: I really would like to have a motion on the floor

[0:52:20] Trustee Bernardo: so we can sort of move on with this item.

[0:52:22] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Harris.

[0:52:23] Trustee Bernardo: I was going to

[0:52:24] Voice 6: ask chair,

[0:52:26] Voice 6: if you would entertain a motion and I would look to you

[0:52:30] Voice 6: if you do think this is something

[0:52:33] Voice 6: that we may want to consider,

[0:52:36] Voice 6: I would look to you to maybe help with the wording of it.

[0:52:39] Voice 6: But I have a motion here that financial planning committee

[0:52:42] Voice 6: recommend that trust council hire in-house legal counsel

[0:52:45] Voice 6: for the islands trust and that trust council

[0:52:48] Voice 6: will carefully consider and vet that hire.

[0:52:51] Voice 6: Is that something that seems reasonable to you?

[0:52:54] Trustee Bernardo: I'm not gonna, no, I'm not gonna entertain motion.

[0:52:58] Trustee Bernardo: I'm sorry, Trustee Harris.

[0:52:59] Trustee Bernardo: Okay.

[0:52:59] Trustee Bernardo: I understand where you're coming from,

[0:53:01] Trustee Bernardo: but I don't think this is the time or place

[0:53:03] Trustee Bernardo: for that particular motion.

[0:53:06] Trustee Bernardo: We're looking at the financial implications here

[0:53:08] Trustee Bernardo: and airing out some of the issues.

[0:53:10] Trustee Bernardo: The actual decision to change the management

[0:53:18] Trustee Bernardo: an operational structure, more appropriately,

[0:53:21] Trustee Bernardo: it can probably be a recommendation

[0:53:23] Trustee Bernardo: that comes out of the governance committee

[0:53:25] Trustee Bernardo: rather than here, if it's,

[0:53:27] Trustee Bernardo: and it would have to be discussed there.

[0:53:29] Trustee Bernardo: So I don't think that's an appropriate motion

[0:53:33] Trustee Bernardo: for the item that we have on the floor right now.

[0:53:36] Voice 6: Thank you for that.

[0:53:37] Voice 6: We'll bring it up at governance committee.

[0:53:41] Trustee Bernardo: May I have a motion with respect to

[0:53:44] Trustee Bernardo: what we do with this financial report?

[0:53:46] Trustee Bernardo: We have a request for decision here

[0:53:49] Trustee Bernardo: that we forward the financial report

[0:53:52] Trustee Bernardo: to Trust Council for approval.

[0:53:55] Voice 8: Trustee Graham.

[0:53:56] Voice 4: Thank you, Chair.

[0:53:57] Voice 4: I move that the Financial Planning Committee

[0:53:59] Voice 4: forward the September 30th, 2023 financial report

[0:54:02] Voice 4: to Trust Council for approval.

[0:54:05] Voice 3: I'll second that.

[0:54:07] Trustee Bernardo: Thank you.

[0:54:09] Trustee Bernardo: We've discussed this quite a bit.

[0:54:12] Trustee Bernardo: I'm going to put this up for a vote now.

[0:54:14] Voice 8: All of those in favor, please raise your hands.

[0:54:16] Voice 8: All right, please lower your hands.

[0:54:26] Voice 8: Yeah, me too.

[0:54:27] Voice 8: And those who are opposed, please raise your hands.

[0:54:33] Voice 8: None opposed, resolution passes.

[0:54:36] Voice 8: Moving on to the next item,

[0:54:37] Trustee Bernardo: the second quarter financial forecast,

[0:54:42] Trustee Bernardo: which is being basically brought forward

[0:54:46] Trustee Bernardo: for briefing purposes.

[0:54:48] Trustee Bernardo: Director Mubbs.

[0:54:52] Voice 2: Yes, so our financial forecast,

[0:54:53] Voice 2: we prepare these at the end of quarter two

[0:54:55] Voice 2: and also at the end of quarter three

[0:54:57] Voice 2: to help us understand where our spending might land

[0:55:00] Voice 2: at the end of the year.

[0:55:01] Voice 2: This helps us make sure that we are staying within approved budgets.

[0:55:04] Voice 2: At the end of quarter two, our forecast shows an anticipated underspending of about $250,000 against the approved budget.

[0:55:12] Voice 2: The primary drivers of this are the same drivers that we saw for under budget or under expected in the quarterly reporting.

[0:55:20] Voice 2: And so that's underspending on projects, primarily local trust committee projects, and also underspending in staff salaries, primarily due to vacancies.

[0:55:27] Voice 2: of course we always have some areas of overspending and other areas of underspending

[0:55:32] Voice 2: that bring us to to a net place and we will be looking at some of the areas of overspending

[0:55:39] Voice 2: in a subsequent briefing in this report so that's very high level but i'm happy to take questions

[0:55:46] Trustee Bernardo: floor is open for any questions the trustees may have with respect to the port of the

[0:55:51] Trustee Bernardo: financial forecast trustee

[0:55:54] Voice 8: evan hi

[0:55:56] Voice 9: thanks uh same quest uh same uh comment as before on the two

[0:56:00] Voice 9: tables so the table and on page um what is it uh 23 and then down on 28 and 29 if we can include

[0:56:09] Voice 9: the previous year's actual spends on those as well that would be brilliant thank you we

[0:56:15] Voice 8: can do that

[0:56:17] Voice 8: trustee yates thank you chair bernardo

[0:56:24] Voice 3: um a quick question for director mobs on the last page page

[0:56:28] Voice 3: 27 um it says the budget plan for a transfer from the general surplus fund of 231 000 um and then

[0:56:41] Voice 3: i i hope i'm not reading this incorrectly but in the in the changes to the draft 2024 budget

[0:56:50] Voice 3: budget um it says on page 34 under shortfall surplus and reserves that the transfer from the

[0:56:59] Voice 3: surplus remains unchanged at

[0:57:02] Voice 8: 210 yes so

[0:57:08] Voice 8: is that

[0:57:09] Voice 3: a mistake or or am i reading that incorrectly

[0:57:12] Voice 2: no so the the document we're looking at right now the financial forecast is looking at the current

[0:57:18] Voice 2: year's budget so the current year we anticipated to have a draw from surplus of two hundred and

[0:57:23] Voice 2: $31,000 to fund current year operations. The other document you're referring to is looking

[0:57:29] Voice 2: at next fiscal year. And so that's the draw, the planned draw for next fiscal year.

[0:57:35] Voice 2: Okay. Thank you very much.

[0:57:37] Voice 2: You're welcome. What I will note actually just on the relationship between these two things,

[0:57:43] Voice 2: when we do see planned or forecasted underspending in a year, as we see this year,

[0:57:50] Voice 2: and our plans draw from surplus is lower than what we expected at budget time, we will often

[0:57:57] Voice 2: see that amount then used in next year's budget to offset taxation. So if we underspend this year,

[0:58:03] Voice 2: we have money flowing into surplus, we have more surplus funds to use next year. We tend not to

[0:58:09] Voice 2: rely too heavily on that until we get to third quarter financial forecasting is that forecast

[0:58:14] Voice 2: cast is more reliable than second quarter. The other thing that we do take a look at is when we

[0:58:20] Voice 2: have our forecasted results and we see sort of underspending in areas like salaries and projects,

[0:58:25] Voice 2: for example, we will actually look to using those funds in the current year. So if we are delayed

[0:58:30] Voice 2: in projects and it's due to salaries vacancies or staff vacancies, we may redirect those saved

[0:58:37] Voice 2: salary dollars to either hire contractors or hire a temporary staff person to help move projects

[0:58:43] Voice 2: projects along. And so we'll be looking at a bit of that as a management team in coming months.

[0:58:51] Voice 8: Thank you. Trustee Boland.

[0:58:54] Voice 11: Thanks. I think you may have answered my question, Julia. So you're

[0:58:57] Voice 11: transferring 71,000 to the Zerfas Fund, but I think in next year's budget, you anticipate drawing

[0:59:05] Voice 11: a considerable amount, especially for the Salt Spring projects, which have rolled forward. But

[0:59:13] Voice 11: but I would have expected to see the money from those soul spring projects going into the surplus

[0:59:18] Voice 11: fund. But you're telling me that won't be visible until later in the year. Is that what I've heard

[0:59:25] Voice 11: you say?

[0:59:26] Voice 2: So that is what will happen with projects that have been taxed for in the current year that

[0:59:32] Voice 2: are not moving forward. Those tax dollars will flow into surplus at the end of this year and

[0:59:38] Voice 2: flow out of

[0:59:38] Voice 2: surplus in next year's budget to fund those same projects. Otherwise, we would just be

[0:59:43] Voice 2: be taxing twice for the same work which makes no sense and

[0:59:45] Voice 10: so what we

[0:59:46] Voice 2: do see in the draft budget

[0:59:48] Voice 2: is those salt spring island projects funded from surplus and that is because they're flowing into

[0:59:54] Voice 2: surplus um in the current year at the end of the year

[0:59:56] Voice 11: so the 71 000 isn't there

[1:00:00] Voice 11: complete picture it's just a snapshot halfway through the year there'll be more yeah

[1:00:06] Voice 8: that's

[1:00:08] Voice 8: right yeah okay thank you trustee evans oh i'm sorry

[1:00:15] Voice 9: i didn't take my hand down i don't know

[1:00:17] Voice 9: why it went back up again all

[1:00:19] Trustee Bernardo: right thank you do we have any uh trustee questions about the forecast

[1:00:24] Trustee Bernardo: any further questions nope

[1:00:27] Voice 8: let's move on uh moving on to item 7.3

[1:00:33] Trustee Bernardo: we're starting to leave the the calm waters of safe harbor into the more choppier waters of

[1:00:41] Trustee Bernardo: where the real action is forecasted areas or overspending director mobs perhaps this is the

[1:00:48] Trustee Bernardo: briefing and we're looking forward to the briefing okay

[1:00:53] Voice 2: so by policy staff are required to report to

[1:00:57] Voice 2: executive committee anytime we have an actual overspending in the general ledger to a certain

[1:01:03] Voice 2: magnitude. We are also required by policy to include financial planning committee on that

[1:01:09] Voice 2: reporting. So any general ledger line item that is looking like it's going to be overspent by

[1:01:15] Voice 2: $20,000 or more, we must report out on. So that's what we're doing in this report here.

[1:01:20] Voice 2: We've provided some information on what the actual overspending is and what the forecasted

[1:01:27] Voice 2: overspending is, as well as some commentary as to what is driving the overspend and any

[1:01:32] Voice 2: suggestions for mitigation if there are any from staff executive committee in the policy is tasked

[1:01:39] Voice 2: with providing any mitigation to overspending if they wish to to give that direction to staff

[1:01:44] Voice 2: they did review this report at their meeting last week and gave no direction for mitigation against

[1:01:51] Voice 2: these areas of overspending primarily because the organization as a whole is not forecasted to be

[1:01:57] Voice 2: overspent against its total budget I can walk through these line by line I'm not sure that's

[1:02:03] Voice 2: necessary but I can if the committee wishes or I can just take questions let's

[1:02:09] Trustee Bernardo: uh let's go with

[1:02:10] Trustee Bernardo: the questions option trustee Evans um

[1:02:14] Voice 9: so on page 32 the first line item the executive expense on

[1:02:18] Voice 9: LTCs where the expenses are higher than anticipated or originally expected in this upcoming year's

[1:02:26] Voice 9: budget have we allocated a higher amount to to accommodate this overage I think we did I just

[1:02:35] Voice 9: can't remember off the top of my head if this was actually the case yes

[1:02:40] Voice 2: we have so we do always look

[1:02:43] Voice 2: at our forecast results and our current year actual spending to inform future years budgets

[1:02:48] Voice 2: and that's part of why we're seeing an overspending in the current year is because you know we had

[1:02:54] Voice 2: new chairs with this new term and so we didn't have a solid basis as to how much this would

[1:02:59] Voice 2: cost in the current fiscal. Next year's draft budget has been updated to reflect the higher

[1:03:05] Voice 8: costs. Thank you chair.

[1:03:13] Trustee Elliott: So is part of the formula that we could look at adjusting

[1:03:19] Trustee Elliott: for both LTC executive expenses and meeting expenses the number of electronic meetings

[1:03:27] Trustee Elliott: versus in-person. So as we look forward and we're in the scheduling time right now,

[1:03:34] Trustee Elliott: trying to mitigate some of the costs of in-person meetings, holding them electronically. And

[1:03:41] Trustee Elliott: I guess as a member of executive, I'd ask the chairs to, or my fellow co-chairs to look closely

[1:03:50] Trustee Elliott: at um their meeting schedules coming up and see if we can assess areas that we might be able to

[1:03:57] Trustee Elliott: reduce those expenses there was no mitigation discussion at ec and perhaps there should have

[1:04:03] Trustee Elliott: been so if this body wants to recommend that um i would say this might be an area where

[1:04:09] Trustee Elliott: we could say let's

[1:04:11] Voice 8: try to save some money yeah well mr

[1:04:19] Voice 19: chair with regards that point um

[1:04:21] Voice 19: It's probably a moment of reflection or consideration either by this body or some other body with regards local trust committee meetings have almost always been in person.

[1:04:33] Voice 19: And certainly with COVID and our increased ability to, you know, which forced us into more electronic meetings and our increased technology capability, we were able to deliver on committee meetings, which certainly rendered some savings.

[1:04:49] Voice 19: and indeed trust council meetings themselves so we saw it in that part of the organization

[1:04:55] Voice 19: um as you contemplate extending that potentially just by this line of questioning to local trust

[1:05:01] Voice 19: committees there is a um i just note that this is more than a financial discussion this is a

[1:05:07] Voice 19: cultural discussion um at the islands trust that you would want to factor into any recommendations

[1:05:13] Voice 19: I just note that just knowing and having been in space at a lot of meetings that people, we have not significantly contemplated a change to electronic meetings for most of LTC meetings at this point.

[1:05:31] Voice 19: Thank you, sir.

[1:05:34] Trustee Bernardo: Interesting comment. I would just add that certainly in my area, the local trust area, the Gambier local trust area.

[1:05:39] Trustee Bernardo: you um we rely predominantly on electronic meetings and i appreciate that excuse me i

[1:05:47] Trustee Bernardo: appreciate that in a different local trust areas uh as the ceo pointed out there may be a different

[1:05:53] Trustee Bernardo: expectation among the population there uh i guess the question uh provoked by trustee elliott's

[1:05:59] Trustee Bernardo: comment is uh just because people are used to having live meetings where a few people show up

[1:06:06] Trustee Bernardo: doesn't necessarily mean that we need to keep doing it there is as ever a cost benefit issue

[1:06:13] Trustee Bernardo: in gambier the benefit to having electronic meetings just works out for everybody it may

[1:06:20] Trustee Bernardo: work out the same in some other areas may not in others trustee evans thank

[1:06:26] Voice 9: you i was just going

[1:06:27] Voice 9: to state that for south panda we had made a resolution for staff and the chair to join

[1:06:34] Voice 9: electronically and attend when needed so we already have that in place this next

[1:06:41] Voice 9: upcoming meeting I think is necessary for everyone to be in place but we have

[1:06:46] Voice 9: that resolution so that it's not required for staff and the chair to

[1:06:51] Voice 9: travel to each of our in-person meetings and they're done live as well so that's

[1:06:56] Voice 9: an option for people to thank you

[1:06:59] Voice 4: trustee grant Thank You chair just to

[1:07:03] Voice 4: add to trustee evans's comment um our communities really love to have the locally elected trustees

[1:07:10] Voice 4: in place but i agree the chair i think could easily come in electronically i have shared

[1:07:16] Voice 4: electronically before um it's it's doable especially if you're if you're taking your

[1:07:22] Voice 4: role as a chair as really traffic cop as opposed to participant um anyway that's my comment

[1:07:29] Voice 8: trustee hearst i agree on

[1:07:34] Voice 6: the electronic thing to a degree but we've seen especially in places

[1:07:39] Voice 6: like the steedy or fetus um where we do have um you know members of the executive committee

[1:07:47] Voice 6: residing those the internet services are not really that great there and that could be a

[1:07:52] Voice 6: a bit of a problem at crucial points in an ltc meeting but with that i would think there's a

[1:08:00] Voice 6: a greater conversation to be had clearly at governance committee where um maybe things need

[1:08:04] Voice 6: to be struck restructured and you know for instance and i know a disturbance to the hard

[1:08:10] Voice 6: work of trustee peterson but the to a lot of people in salt spring island the thought of having

[1:08:15] Voice 6: the chair or uh you know a de facto sort of mayor of salt spring coming from a place where

[1:08:20] Voice 6: you know maybe there was a couple hundred votes or something for a person that is very troublesome so

[1:08:25] Voice 6: maybe there's a greater conversation to be had here um but those are my two cents thanks

[1:08:29] Voice 6: i

[1:08:30] Trustee Bernardo: think trustee harris intuited my comment which is yes that conversation probably does need to be

[1:08:38] Trustee Bernardo: had elsewhere trustee peterson yeah

[1:08:44] Voice 5: i i agree with the last point there uh that certainly

[1:08:47] Voice 5: sounds like governance committee territory to me um you know notwithstanding that uh that that

[1:08:55] Voice 5: Gambier mostly operates electronically. Certainly in the community I'm elected on in Leskete,

[1:09:04] Voice 5: electronic doesn't necessarily work for everyone. And in some of the communities in which I'm the

[1:09:13] Voice 5: appointed chair, I have heard loud and clear from members of the public that there's a feeling

[1:09:23] Voice 5: among some people that electronic is actually less open to the local um to to the local

[1:09:32] Voice 5: participation and so my suspect my my sense is that if if we were to consider going um to more

[1:09:42] Voice 5: electronic meetings for local trust committees we'd get significant public uh pushback in certain

[1:09:49] Voice 5: in certain uh areas so just all

[1:09:53] Trustee Bernardo: right thanks trustee peterson uh we have a lot of things

[1:09:56] Trustee Bernardo: to do today uh i'm going to close off the discussion with respect to this particular item

[1:10:00] Trustee Bernardo: let's not forget we're looking at the overall overspending uh forecast here that's the issue

[1:10:06] Trustee Bernardo: before us uh that's what we've been briefed on um and um it's interesting to hear that

[1:10:15] Trustee Bernardo: the executive committee didn't contemplate

[1:10:17] Trustee Bernardo: it was necessary to engage into a discussion

[1:10:20] Trustee Bernardo: about mitigating the overspending

[1:10:22] Trustee Bernardo: because overall the spending is more or less on track.

[1:10:26] Trustee Bernardo: But if mitigation is feasible in any area,

[1:10:31] Trustee Bernardo: but it seems sensible to explore it.

[1:10:33] Trustee Bernardo: I'm wondering if we want a motion

[1:10:40] Trustee Bernardo: and to discuss the possibility of asking staff

[1:10:44] Trustee Bernardo: to explore mitigation measures

[1:10:46] Trustee Bernardo: on each of these overspending items.

[1:10:51] Voice 8: It's just a thought, Trustee Evans.

[1:10:55] Voice 9: Thanks, I can put something together there.

[1:10:58] Voice 9: I just wanted to clarify what we on South Pando

[1:11:01] Voice 9: had been doing, which is in-person meetings with staff

[1:11:03] Voice 9: and the chair joining electronically.

[1:11:06] Voice 9: That might be an option for other islands

[1:11:10] Voice 9: to reduce the overspending in this particular area.

[1:11:13] Voice 9: So I can move that the financial planning committee

[1:11:17] Voice 9: request staff to look at the option of having staff and the chair joining the LTC meetings

[1:11:32] Voice 8: electronically except when requested otherwise. Do we have a seconder for that motion?

[1:11:48] Voice 9: Let's get it on the screen first and let me make sure that the wording that I've given is

[1:11:53] Voice 9: is actually what I intend.

[1:11:55] Voice 8: Make my screen a little bit bigger here.

[1:12:05] Voice 8: Look at the option of having staff and the chair

[1:12:09] Voice 8: during LTC meetings.

[1:12:12] Voice 8: I wonder if I should, okay.

[1:12:20] Voice 9: So let's say that the financial planning committee

[1:12:22] Voice 9: requests staff to look at the option

[1:12:25] Voice 9: of local trust committees

[1:12:27] Voice 8: passing a resolution

[1:12:36] Voice 8: to have staff and the chair

[1:12:38] Voice 8: join their LTC meetings electronically

[1:12:51] Voice 9: except when requested otherwise when

[1:12:53] Trustee Bernardo: you say in your motion request staff to look at the option

[1:12:56] Trustee Bernardo: of the ltc uh that's a little loose uh do you want do you mean that you want staff to look at

[1:13:05] Trustee Bernardo: the option of encouraging local trust committees to pass resolutions yes yes

[1:13:10] Voice 10: please okay

[1:13:12] Trustee Bernardo: well it's

[1:13:13] Trustee Bernardo: your resolution i can't say that you have to say it yep

[1:13:18] Voice 9: so that the financial planning committee

[1:13:20] Voice 9: committee request staff to encourage well

[1:13:25] Trustee Bernardo: I think I think you want the first language you're talking

[1:13:29] Trustee Bernardo: about to look at the option of encouraging local trust committees because as we've heard in the

[1:13:33] Trustee Bernardo: discussion there's pros and cons there it might work for some areas might not work for others

[1:13:38] Trustee Bernardo: so shaking out the different elements of that might be helpful I don't know okay

[1:13:45] Voice 9: so the financial

[1:13:47] Voice 9: planning committee request staff to look at the option of encouraging local trust committees

[1:13:51] Voice 9: to pass

[1:13:52] Voice 8: a resolution of having...

[1:14:02] Voice 8: I think you got it there.

[1:14:07] Voice 8: I mean, the meaning is very clear, I think.

[1:14:12] Voice 8: Trustee Boland.

[1:14:16] Voice 10: Yeah, in that, and it may come

[1:14:18] Voice 11: out of it,

[1:14:20] Voice 11: I'd like to understand this, the technology...

[1:14:23] Voice 9: Sorry, before we can

[1:14:24] Voice 9: discuss the motion,

[1:14:26] Voice 9: I think it has to be said.

[1:14:28] Voice 9: Oh, okay.

[1:14:29] Voice 9: I'll second it.

[1:14:31] Trustee Bernardo: Okay, the motion's on the floor.

[1:14:32] Trustee Bernardo: It's open for discussion,

[1:14:33] Trustee Bernardo: and i take it trustee bowen you've got something to say about it

[1:14:36] Voice 11: yeah they what what i'm um i i

[1:14:41] Voice 11: agree that it's it's a good path and electronic meetings are definitely should we should be using

[1:14:47] Voice 11: them more not not many people show up at saturn meetings and it's usually the same few who could

[1:14:55] Voice 11: probably be persuaded in fact we may get more attendees if we went to fully electronic you know

[1:15:02] Voice 11: at the moment we do obviously broadcast but anyway uh the difficulty not difficulty but

[1:15:09] Voice 11: i just want to understand uh so when it's a hybrid meeting who would operate the technology

[1:15:16] Voice 11: in the room in the case that you're in a community hall with two trustees and an audience

[1:15:22] Voice 11: i don't need the answer now but that's what i'd like clarified because currently david

[1:15:31] Voice 11: mode shows up sets up all the gear we relax so i can see that would change and i'm just

[1:15:37] Voice 11: curious about what that would require thank you no worries

[1:15:42] Voice 9: can i actually speak to the motion

[1:15:44] Voice 9: as well as soon

[1:15:45] Trustee Bernardo: as i get a chance to speak in a moment it's your motion trustee evans it's on the

[1:15:50] Trustee Bernardo: floor you'll get your shot at it just put your hand up no

[1:15:53] Voice 9: normally normally the normally the

[1:15:55] Voice 9: mover gets to speak to their motion and i didn't get my chance to speak to my motion

[1:15:58] Voice 9: I

[1:15:59] Trustee Patrick: I'm going to put a motion to defer this to the agenda items so that's coming up well I'm not

[1:16:08] Trustee Bernardo: trying to stand that there's

[1:16:10] Trustee Patrick: agenda item 4742 costs of executive committee chairing local

[1:16:14] Trustee Patrick: trust committees I think this issue should be discussed at that item on the agenda it's a fair

[1:16:20] Trustee Bernardo: comment um over to you trustee Evans uh your motion do you want to put it on hold pending

[1:16:27] Trustee Bernardo: that discussion?

[1:16:28] Voice 9: Well I actually wanted to speak to it first before we opened up the discussion on

[1:16:33] Voice 9: it. So like I've said how South Panda already has this resolution in place. The way that it works

[1:16:42] Voice 9: is we're having in-person meetings by the local trust committee. Residents can show up as they

[1:16:48] Voice 9: wish or they can join via electronically. The person who sets it up is one of the trustees

[1:16:55] Voice 9: and with aid from staff in the office.

[1:17:01] Voice 9: It's been working really well.

[1:17:03] Voice 9: It helps to cut down the cost for both staff and the chair.

[1:17:08] Voice 9: And I think this would work really well on a lot of islands.

[1:17:13] Voice 9: And for those chairs who are in areas

[1:17:17] Voice 9: where they also suffer from poor internet service,

[1:17:21] Voice 9: they wouldn't have to travel as far.

[1:17:26] Voice 9: So as far as Trustee Patrick's motion to move it to further down the path, we can do that.

[1:17:34] Voice 9: I'm fine with that.

[1:17:37] Voice 9: I

[1:17:38] Trustee Bernardo: don't think we need a motion for that. I'm going to table this motion and I will bring it back up for discussion when we get to 7.4.2.

[1:17:50] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Patrick's comment was well taken. It's on the agenda.

[1:17:54] Voice 18: We

[1:17:55] Trustee Bernardo: have the motion, we understand the context.

[1:17:57] Trustee Bernardo: We don't have to be, you know,

[1:18:00] Trustee Bernardo: it's fully transparent what we're doing here.

[1:18:02] Trustee Bernardo: So let's just kick it down until we get to 7.4.2.

[1:18:05] Trustee Bernardo: With respect to other, there's other areas of overspending

[1:18:11] Trustee Bernardo: that are in this forecast.

[1:18:14] Trustee Bernardo: Let's park this one.

[1:18:15] Trustee Bernardo: And do trustees have any comments about other areas?

[1:18:18] Trustee Bernardo: And I'm aware

[1:18:19] Voice 8: that trustee Luckum has his hand up.

[1:18:26] Voice 8: I'm sorry, I'll lower my hand

[1:18:27] Voice 8: until we have the discussion later.

[1:18:29] Voice 8: all right okay i dread

[1:18:33] Trustee Bernardo: this i see mr marler has some legislative comments no doubt to impose on me

[1:18:37] Voice 8: go ahead yeah

[1:18:41] Voice 1: thank you just a procedural um it really if you're going to table it it should be

[1:18:47] Voice 1: a motion to table uh so that the uh committee is agreed it's not the chair's prerogative to just

[1:18:54] Voice 1: do that given it's on the floor already um so i just wanted to offer that advice to you

[1:19:00] Voice 1: thanks um i

[1:19:02] Voice 8: was under the impression it was happening

[1:19:03] Trustee Bernardo: by general consent

[1:19:06] Voice 8: uh

[1:19:07] Trustee Bernardo: are there any objections to to kicking this down to 7.4.2 let's not waste time with

[1:19:12] Trustee Bernardo: pointless formalities here uh no there's no objections all right uh are there any other

[1:19:21] Trustee Bernardo: comments with respect to other areas of where we're spending and is there anything we want

[1:19:26] Trustee Bernardo: want staff to do in terms of exploring options

[1:19:30] Trustee Bernardo: to deal with those things.

[1:19:31] Voice 8: I don't see any

[1:19:37] Trustee Bernardo: comments, any further comments.

[1:19:38] Trustee Bernardo: So with that, I think we've explored the areas

[1:19:43] Trustee Bernardo: of overspending and now we get into the discussion

[1:19:45] Trustee Bernardo: of the version two of the draft budget, 7.4.1.

[1:19:53] Trustee Bernardo: Director Mott, perhaps you could review the changes

[1:19:56] Voice 8: since the last draft.

[1:20:02] Voice 8: Happy to, Chair.

[1:20:03] Voice 2: Would the committee like me to go through every single change or simply give a high-level overview of the impact of the changes?

[1:20:13] Trustee Bernardo: I'm going to suggest we do the high-level review and then open up the floor for discussions of any specifics that people want to address.

[1:20:22] Voice 2: Okay, that sounds good.

[1:20:24] Voice 2: So, of course, there's been some changes to the draft budget since the committee reviewed it at their October meeting.

[1:20:30] Voice 2: The changes have been summarized in this briefing for you so you can understand what those changes are as well as the impact.

[1:20:37] Voice 2: The start of the report gives a high level summary which I'll touch on.

[1:20:42] Voice 2: The external revenues that are included in the draft budget have decreased by $121,000.

[1:20:48] Voice 2: That's because we've seen a shift in local trust area general taxation from 11.4% in the previous budget down to 10.5% in the current version of the budget.

[1:20:59] Voice 2: it. The Bowen Island tax levy has increased from $406,000 to $432,000, and we've seen a decrease

[1:21:07] Voice 2: of $50,000 from other external revenue sources, and that's related to grant revenue. On the

[1:21:15] Voice 2: spending side of things, we've seen total spending increase from $10.7 million to $10.8 million.

[1:21:21] Voice 2: There's lots of small changes that have happened, which are provided in detail in this report.

[1:21:26] Voice 2: The primary drivers of the spending increase are the inclusion of a First Nations engagement plan for the Islands Trust Conservancy, which was missed in the previous version, although the board had requested it.

[1:21:38] Voice 2: We've also included a small $3,000 placeholder of funds for the Governance Committee to take on work that may arise in the year at the request of the CAO.

[1:21:47] Voice 2: We've also included a higher amount for the Gabriela Island Local Trust Committee OCP project.

[1:21:53] Voice 2: So the business case for this project was provided with the previous version of the budget. It had two amounts in it. The lower amount was reflected in the previous version of the budget. We have received clarity that the higher amount should have been included, and so we've increased that amount.

[1:22:08] Voice 2: out. All the changes in the budget have changed the budgeted shortfall so the budgeted shortfall

[1:22:14] Voice 2: has increased from $246,000 to $429,000 and so we do require internal funds to then fund that

[1:22:24] Voice 2: shortfall. So the transfer from general surplus has remained unchanged at $210,000 however we

[1:22:31] Voice 2: are seeing an increase in the planned draw from the local trust committee project specific reserve

[1:22:36] Voice 2: fund. That was $36,000 in the previous budget. In the current budget, it's reflected at $219,000.

[1:22:44] Voice 2: So the rest of the report gets into the detail of specific items. So as requested, I can simply

[1:22:51] Voice 2: pause there and take questions instead of going into detail on those.

[1:22:57] Trustee Bernardo: Marla, I see you still have your hand up. Is that an oversight or you actually have something?

[1:23:02] Trustee Bernardo: Oh, here we go. Thank you.

[1:23:03] Voice 1: Oversight. Thank you.

[1:23:04] Voice 1: Thank

[1:23:05] Trustee Bernardo: you. Trustees, do we have any specific comments about these individual items

[1:23:14] Voice 8: that account for the changes to the budget? Seeing none, we move on to 7.4.2.

[1:23:24] Trustee Bernardo: And we return to the outstanding motion that Trustee Evans has put on the floor and that

[1:23:30] Trustee Bernardo: that has been seconded and is open for discussion,

[1:23:34] Trustee Bernardo: which is the costs, exploring the avenues

[1:23:38] Trustee Bernardo: to reduce the costs of executive committee members

[1:23:42] Trustee Bernardo: chairing local trust committees and reducing that

[1:23:45] Trustee Bernardo: by encouraging the use of electronic meetings.

[1:23:48] Trustee Bernardo: That's what's on the floor for the discussion.

[1:23:51] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Elliot.

[1:23:53] Voice 13: I'll defer to the CAO in case there's information

[1:23:56] Trustee Elliott: on this report that we need to hear first.

[1:23:58] Trustee Elliott: uh

[1:24:00] Voice 2: if i could just interject sorry chair uh i just do need to note this report had a couple

[1:24:07] Voice 2: of numerical errors in it uh so the low-end meeting cost and high-end meeting cost um for

[1:24:13] Voice 2: the salt spring and local trust committee and one other were a bit off so we've updated those

[1:24:18] Voice 2: numbers and we can pull the updated figures onto screen if you can do that for us nancy that would

[1:24:23] Voice 2: be great um not significant difference just wanted to alert you to that that

[1:24:28] Voice 3: is the one that's on the

[1:24:29] Voice 3: the screen the revised version oh

[1:24:33] Voice 2: we don't see it we still see budget oh you're not

[1:24:36] Voice 3: seeing it okay

[1:24:37] Voice 3: um i wonder

[1:24:38] Voice 2: why you're not seeing it we're

[1:24:41] Trustee Bernardo: at 7.4.2 right now it's that's the information we

[1:24:45] Trustee Bernardo: need whoever sharing screen

[1:24:48] Trustee Elliott: may have to switch windows oh yes can you

[1:24:52] Voice 8: see it now

[1:24:52] Voice 3: yes okay yes

[1:24:54] Voice 3: it just didn't take for some reason okay all

[1:24:57] Trustee Bernardo: right so uh what page are we talking about those

[1:25:01] Trustee Bernardo: if those corrections are necessary?

[1:25:03] Voice 2: Page 38

[1:25:04] Voice 2: of the agenda package.

[1:25:06] Voice 2: There's a

[1:25:07] Voice 2: table in that report.

[1:25:09] Voice 2: And at the far right of the table,

[1:25:11] Voice 2: there's low end meeting cost,

[1:25:13] Voice 2: which reflects the cheapest cost of a meeting

[1:25:15] Voice 2: and the high end, which is the most expensive cost.

[1:25:19] Voice 2: Some of those figures have been updated

[1:25:21] Voice 2: and the new figures are on screen.

[1:25:23] Voice 2: The biggest change was for Salt Spring Island

[1:25:25] Voice 2: Local Trust Committee.

[1:25:26] Voice 8: All right, thank you for that.

[1:25:29] Voice 8: CAO.

[1:25:30] Voice 8: well

[1:25:31] Voice 19: mr chair uh are you now entertaining uh the evans motion you're having

[1:25:36] Voice 19: discussions on it

[1:25:37] Voice 19: i will give you my advice right now and that that that you include language in here to make this of

[1:25:42] Voice 19: a financial nature uh the delivery of meetings live by um the islands trust has been a well

[1:25:51] Voice 19: thought out over time um system that has a raft of policies associated with it including limitations

[1:26:00] Voice 19: limitations on chairs not being present. So if I'm assuming FPC's considerations are of a financial

[1:26:09] Voice 19: nature, and you might encourage LTCs to take a look at that, but there would be significant

[1:26:15] Voice 19: cultural policy-based changes to a variety of LTCs based on what I'm assuming is financial advice.

[1:26:28] Voice 19: there may be other avenues to look at the topic you're discussing through executive committee

[1:26:35] Voice 19: itself or perhaps of the governance committee i'm not sure but i just wanted to make that point

[1:26:41] Voice 19: before you move forward thank you

[1:26:44] Trustee Bernardo: ceo i confess i don't actually understand the comment about

[1:26:48] Trustee Bernardo: what it is about the resolution that makes you uncomfortable and what you mean by of a financial

[1:26:53] Trustee Bernardo: nature i thought it was implicit and perhaps we could have the resolution on the screen

[1:26:57] Trustee Bernardo: I thought it's fairly implicit that that's why we're asking that staff or I

[1:27:06] Voice 19: do not read

[1:27:07] Voice 19: sir with respect I don't read that as implicit you're asking staff to write to encourage LTCs

[1:27:15] Voice 19: to pass such a resolution yes I

[1:27:18] Voice 19: would not be able to do that right now I couldn't write a

[1:27:21] Voice 19: a report encouraging LTCs to do this because the factors that determine the value

[1:27:30] Voice 19: of such a determination are more than financial.

[1:27:35] Trustee Bernardo: Well, CAO, when you're talking about values,

[1:27:38] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, are there rules that you're saying get in, pre-existing rules or policies that get in?

[1:27:44] Trustee Bernardo: Absolutely.

[1:27:46] Voice 19: There's both a history of having a three-person decision-making body sitting on island, having community members get to know

[1:28:00] Voice 8: the

[1:28:01] Voice 19: chairs. I'll just finish

[1:28:03] Voice 19: briefly. And there's policies that limit how often a chair cannot be on island or be electronic. And David could provide us that.

[1:28:13] Voice 19: so i'm just saying there's more to this um this looks like it's a financial consideration

[1:28:18] Voice 19: recommendation um you're in the words encourage loc i would be unable to write that report at

[1:28:25] Voice 19: this point to encourage them to do that because the implication

[1:28:29] Voice 19: there are other implications

[1:28:30] Voice 19: associated with that thank you sir

[1:28:32] Trustee Bernardo: ceo i think ceo you misunderstand the language of the resolution

[1:28:35] Trustee Bernardo: that's possible the resolution says that the financial planning committee requests staff

[1:28:44] Trustee Bernardo: to look at the option of encouraging local trust committees to pass the resolution

[1:28:48] Trustee Bernardo: what you're speaking to is limitations on the feasibility of encouraging local trust committees

[1:28:58] Trustee Bernardo: to do so that's part of the exercise of looking at the option we would want staff if this resolution

[1:29:06] Trustee Bernardo: passed, it would basically be saying the FPC wants staff to come back to us and give us

[1:29:13] Trustee Bernardo: a report that tells us what the pros and cons are of doing this. It's not saying go forward

[1:29:21] Trustee Bernardo: and encourage local trust committees to do it. It's asking staff to explore the option.

[1:29:28] Voice 8: So that's a different thing. Trustee Elliott.

[1:29:32] Trustee Elliott: Thank you, Chair. I regret bringing my ill-considered

[1:29:37] Trustee Elliott: thoughts forward to financial planning committee because this is uh more of a decision for

[1:29:43] Trustee Elliott: executive committee um which we are considering but we hadn't seen this report at last executive

[1:29:50] Trustee Elliott: committee meeting i believe um it will be for consideration of the our next meeting and what i'm

[1:30:00] Trustee Elliott: Looking at, sorry, not, so going away from the resolution and back to the report itself, the highest cost and where we could actually see some savings, I think is accommodation on Salt Spring.

[1:30:13] Trustee Elliott: And so would it not be prudent to look at the financial aspects of that and do something very practical, which is request staff to book accommodations in the most economical manner for LTC chairs on the known scheduled dates a year in advance so that we can get some savings.

[1:30:34] Trustee Elliott: That is a financial recommendation that I think this body can make. It cannot make a decision about these larger policies and the advisability of local trust committees to have chairs attending in person or not.

[1:30:52] Trustee Elliott: and i would actually in reference to trustee evans comment um it was not a successful meeting

[1:31:01] Trustee Elliott: chairing remotely in on june 3rd on south bender uh we ended up with a resolution that was

[1:31:07] Trustee Elliott: impossible um and did not function we didn't have staff support and i was not in the room and it was

[1:31:14] Trustee Elliott: a hard meeting to to navigate so i'd say in some cases it may work um if that option is available

[1:31:21] Trustee Elliott: But the implications of this body suggesting we change the whole way that we chair local trust committee meetings is a larger question than I think can be addressed.

[1:31:34] Trustee Elliott: I think we should stick to financial considerations and booking accommodations could be something that staff could be requested to do so that we see savings long term.

[1:31:47] Trustee Bernardo: well the same comments i had the ceo applied equally i think to trustee elliott to your

[1:31:52] Trustee Bernardo: comments um again i appreciate the point that it that there are manifold issues besides finance

[1:32:03] Trustee Bernardo: that go into whether or not a meeting is held in person or whether or not a chair is present

[1:32:09] Trustee Bernardo: those are things that need to be looked at the intent behind this is pretty clear it is financial

[1:32:14] Trustee Bernardo: The item on the list is 7.4.2.

[1:32:17] Trustee Bernardo: It's about the cost of conducting these meetings.

[1:32:21] Trustee Bernardo: This is a cost center.

[1:32:23] Trustee Bernardo: It's an issue.

[1:32:25] Trustee Bernardo: There's nothing.

[1:32:26] Trustee Bernardo: First of all, the FPC is not in a position to bind anybody to do anything.

[1:32:31] Trustee Bernardo: What we're looking at, what this point of this resolution seems to be, is to explore the issue with a view to saving money.

[1:32:40] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, that's pretty clear.

[1:32:41] Trustee Bernardo: clear and it doesn't foreclose a separate motion to address the issue of the accommodation issue

[1:32:47] Trustee Bernardo: uh that is related to executive committee chairing but uh it's pretty clear that holding

[1:32:52] Trustee Bernardo: the in-person meetings is a is is a cost center all

[1:32:58] Trustee Elliott: good stuff doing this on this on based on the

[1:33:02] Trustee Elliott: cost this resolution does not make any sense to me and i completely agree with the cao this doesn't

[1:33:07] Trustee Elliott: say cost savings it doesn't say expenses it says encourage them to pass a resolution to have staff

[1:33:14] Trustee Elliott: join their meetings that has way broader implications than financial and if this

[1:33:19] Trustee Elliott: resolute i can't support this resolution it's super unclear and it's beyond the purview of

[1:33:23] Trustee Elliott: this committee well

[1:33:26] Trustee Bernardo: um i i would have thought it's pretty clear that the fbc is in the finance

[1:33:31] Trustee Bernardo: business and item is about saving costs would it make you feel better if uh the resolution was

[1:33:37] Trustee Bernardo: was amended to say request staff to look at the option of uh reducing the cost of chairing local

[1:33:44] Trustee Bernardo: trust meetings by encouraging them to blah blah blah you know no

[1:33:49] Trustee Elliott: they can't encourage ltcs they

[1:33:51] Trustee Elliott: can do analysis on the relative costs and benefits one of those factors is financial

[1:33:58] Trustee Elliott: so if this body can direct staff to do an analysis on the financial implications of

[1:34:05] Trustee Elliott: of staff attending meetings virtually versus in person, that may be something we can recommend.

[1:34:17] Trustee Elliott: Chairs attending virtually versus in person has larger policy implications that this body cannot

[1:34:24] Trustee Elliott: address in this conversation. Staff attending virtually, can we see some cost savings in that?

[1:34:31] Trustee Elliott: asking staff to do analysis is very specific.

[1:34:35] Trustee Elliott: Asking them to canvass all the LTCs

[1:34:38] Trustee Elliott: and see if they have an appetite for this

[1:34:41] Trustee Elliott: is not a, it's a backwards way of doing the business.

[1:34:45] Trustee Bernardo: All right, well, we have your perspective on this,

[1:34:47] Trustee Bernardo: but the resolution is what it is.

[1:34:50] Trustee Bernardo: I trust you .

[1:34:53] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, thank you, Chair.

[1:34:56] Trustee Luckham: Certainly an amendment would be an appropriate avenue

[1:34:59] Trustee Luckham: if we're not satisfied with the wording.

[1:35:02] Trustee Luckham: You know, one way or the other, I don't know that there's anything terribly wrong with

[1:35:06] Trustee Luckham: looking at options, financial and otherwise, for how local trust committees are attended,

[1:35:17] Trustee Luckham: we'll say that.

[1:35:19] Trustee Luckham: However, I think that what's worthy and I'd be certainly happy to engage in the question

[1:35:25] Trustee Luckham: when it arises whether it's at executive committee or maybe more appropriately at

[1:35:30] Trustee Luckham: local trust committees and at council because certainly is the driver for meetings in person

[1:35:39] Trustee Luckham: has been something that we've heard from council and from local trust committees certainly there's

[1:35:45] Trustee Luckham: many kinds of meetings that could be held electronically and that certainly works well

[1:35:48] Trustee Luckham: and if it's an all member meeting including public that's electronic that seems to be

[1:35:55] Trustee Luckham: be the one that works the best.

[1:35:57] Trustee Luckham: However, just in my experience of being a chair

[1:36:00] Trustee Luckham: on LTCs about 12 years now, I guess,

[1:36:03] Trustee Luckham: and experienced more recently in watching scenarios unfold

[1:36:07] Trustee Luckham: at local trust committees,

[1:36:08] Trustee Luckham: I would caution us to consider the broader ramifications

[1:36:13] Trustee Luckham: that's been indicated by Trustee Elliot,

[1:36:16] Trustee Luckham: because when the wheels come off the bus,

[1:36:19] Trustee Luckham: it is more often when the chair is not physically

[1:36:23] Trustee Luckham: in the room and is attending electronically. And the wheels coming off the bus can be trustees or

[1:36:28] Trustee Luckham: it can be staff or staff would never come off the bus. So what I meant was trustees and members of

[1:36:34] Trustee Luckham: the public that are difficult to manage in situations where you're not physically present.

[1:36:40] Trustee Luckham: I want to remind everybody, actually, that although certainly the chairs are appointed

[1:36:46] Trustee Luckham: appointed by myself through the powers of the executive committee um the those vice chairs

[1:36:54] Trustee Luckham: those uh individuals are fully constituted voting members of an ltc they are trustees of an ltc

[1:37:01] Trustee Luckham: and um and the members of the public do enjoy and and would like to have chairs in attendance and i

[1:37:09] Trustee Luckham: think there's some value in it in chairs attending uh meetings in person to get to know the communities

[1:37:14] Trustee Luckham: better. So it's up to you how you want to move on this. Certainly an amendment to this might help

[1:37:21] Trustee Luckham: advance it more smoothly. Three

[1:37:26] Voice 10: comments. One is we're

[1:37:30] Voice 11: not recommending only this. It can be

[1:37:33] Voice 11: both at different times or either. And perhaps you could amend this to say,

[1:37:42] Voice 11: a, you know, as requested otherwise, and as constrained by existing policies within those

[1:37:48] Voice 11: constraints. The other thing I want to draw attention to, though, is that in the cost,

[1:37:56] Voice 11: we don't factor in time. And the travel time for trustees and for staff is, you know,

[1:38:05] Voice 11: a significant cost in all of these things. And again, we have not put an estimate of hours in

[1:38:11] Voice 11: here spent on ferries traveling etc etc like dead time effectively and I think there was a report

[1:38:19] Voice 11: for Denman Island which was mentioned last year sometime and it was quite it was a report prepared

[1:38:27] Voice 11: to describe the number of hours involved in staff traveling to meetings and there was a discussion

[1:38:35] Voice 11: at the time that it was quite eye-opening and that perhaps it should be you know brought back

[1:38:41] Voice 11: to the table and the last thing i'll say is the zoom licenses were acquired six months before

[1:38:47] Voice 11: covid they were not a consequence of covid so surely there was some thought given at that time

[1:38:53] Voice 11: to how those that ability to host virtual meetings would change our way of working i don't know if

[1:39:02] Voice 11: if there was a business case prepared for those zoom licenses but i would love to go back and

[1:39:07] Voice 11: consider you know because as far as i can see what we've done to some degree is just layer it on top

[1:39:14] Voice 11: of the way we've always done it so it adds another layer without actually removing

[1:39:21] Voice 11: um anything from from the way we've always done it and that may be

[1:39:27] Voice 11: constrained by policies or not

[1:39:29] Voice 11: but it's worth consideration thank

[1:39:31] Voice 8: you trust you patrick oh

[1:39:36] Trustee Patrick: this is a complex this is a complex

[1:39:39] Trustee Patrick: issue and i think this report raises a number of things i mean one is it's overall saying that the

[1:39:45] Trustee Patrick: costs of uh of uh you know the executive role are more expensive this this term than past

[1:39:53] Trustee Patrick: um and i think it it does raise a a number of issues uh that are beyond just this this issue

[1:40:00] Trustee Patrick: but that includes like we elect vice presidents without even consideration of the cost. That's

[1:40:07] Trustee Patrick: not something. And then they're appointed without consideration of cost. So this brings in a bunch

[1:40:12] Trustee Patrick: of other policies. I understand and I agree with the gist of what we're trying to do with this

[1:40:18] Trustee Patrick: motion. I think we should just acknowledge we're reacting to the fact that this is high. There's a

[1:40:27] Trustee Patrick: a high cost to this and i think what we're doing is requesting staff to provide some analysis

[1:40:33] Trustee Patrick: to about conducting ltc meetings either electronically or the chairs being there

[1:40:39] Trustee Patrick: electronically um and that who should be the receipt of that information if they're doing

[1:40:45] Trustee Patrick: the analysis is that us or does that go to ec to consider to make some changes so i i would

[1:40:51] Trustee Patrick: And I encourage that we either amend this motion,

[1:40:57] Trustee Patrick: which it's getting probably complicated to amend,

[1:41:00] Trustee Patrick: but I think that's what we're looking for

[1:41:02] Trustee Patrick: is we're looking for analysis.

[1:41:04] Trustee Patrick: And I think we're looking for analysis on two things,

[1:41:07] Trustee Patrick: both meetings electronically

[1:41:09] Trustee Patrick: or chairs being there electronically.

[1:41:14] Trustee Patrick: And who does that analysis go to?

[1:41:17] Trustee Patrick: I think it's EC.

[1:41:18] Trustee Patrick: well

[1:41:19] Trustee Bernardo: the um the ec can make use of that information but um i would think it's easy

[1:41:25] Trustee Bernardo: to it's up to the ec to get whatever information they need uh it would be within i mean the

[1:41:32] Trustee Bernardo: financial planning committee our job is is to mind the expenses point

[1:41:36] Voice 5: of order mr chair yes

[1:41:38] Voice 5: um uh i i see that you're following into a habit of sort of replying to multiple comments from

[1:41:46] Voice 5: from different members of the committee.

[1:41:47] Voice 5: I'd prefer if you just move on to the next person

[1:41:50] Voice 5: and put your hand up and speak when you're ready.

[1:41:53] Voice 5: Thank you.

[1:41:54] Trustee Bernardo: Fair enough.

[1:41:55] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Evans, go ahead.

[1:41:58] Voice 10: Thank you.

[1:41:59] Voice 9: I'd like to amend the motion by changing the word and

[1:42:06] Voice 9: where it says to have staff and the chair,

[1:42:09] Voice 9: change the word and to

[1:42:11] Voice 8: and slash or,

[1:42:19] Voice 8: and by removing

[1:42:20] Voice 9: at the end of the sentence,

[1:42:23] Voice 9: except when requested otherwise and replacing it with as

[1:42:28] Voice 8: appropriate and

[1:42:47] Voice 10: we also can we also

[1:42:48] Voice 10: include when requested otherwise can we um include the word except

[1:42:51] Voice 9: as well no no no no so uh sorry

[1:42:56] Voice 9: stop stop stop uh where you've got and by removing at the end of the sentence when requested

[1:43:02] Voice 9: otherwise can we put in the word except because i want to have removed except when requested

[1:43:07] Voice 9: otherwise you

[1:43:09] Voice 8: just missed that one word thank you and report back to financial committee

[1:43:18] Voice 8: their findings hopefully that helps address some of the concerns that have been raised

[1:43:34] Voice 8: so that's your motion to that's

[1:43:42] Voice 18: my amendment yes do

[1:43:43] Voice 8: we have a seconder for that i'm guessing

[1:44:05] Voice 8: there's no seconder trustee yates thank you chair boland

[1:44:17] Voice 3: i will not support this motion for all of

[1:44:19] Voice 3: of the reasons that Trustee Elliot has already explained.

[1:44:24] Voice 3: Thank you.

[1:44:25] Voice 3: Sorry,

[1:44:26] Voice 9: point of order, if this hasn't been seconded,

[1:44:28] Voice 9: so we can't discuss it until it's been seconded.

[1:44:32] Voice 9: No, I

[1:44:32] Voice 3: mean the first motion.

[1:44:35] Voice 8: I've got an amendment on the floor.

[1:44:40] Voice 8: Well, if it hasn't been seconded,

[1:44:45] Voice 8: I don't think it's anything but,

[1:44:48] Trustee Bernardo: you know, an orphan.

[1:44:51] Trustee Bernardo: and perhaps we could, I will actually go to Mr. Marler for his insights.

[1:45:00] Voice 1: Yeah, so if it hasn't been seconded, it's actually then up to the chair to determine whether or not

[1:45:06] Voice 1: you would like to have the discussion. So the chair does have that ability under Robert's rules

[1:45:12] Voice 1: to determine it's important for the meeting to consider the resolution.

[1:45:19] Voice 1: This is an amendment, so you may just decide as a chair that because there isn't a seconder, there's no interest in making that amendment, and then you can just continue with the original motion.

[1:45:31] Voice 1: Thank you for that. That's helpful.

[1:45:35] Trustee Bernardo: Just, you know, Trustee Evans is entitled to at least know whether or not there's any support for this amendment motion.

[1:45:44] Trustee Bernardo: motion. So I see there's already some hands up. But I want to ask the specific question of

[1:45:52] Trustee Bernardo: Trustees Peterson and Elliott. Are your comments about Trustee Evans proposed amendment or about

[1:46:01] Trustee Bernardo: something else? If they're about something else, I'd like to just hold that for a moment.

[1:46:05] Trustee Bernardo: I

[1:46:06] Voice 5: had a different amendment proposed.

[1:46:10] Voice 5: and I did

[1:46:14] Trustee Elliott: not think we were discussing this resolution yet I thought we were talking about

[1:46:18] Trustee Elliott: the briefing as a whole first but I may have missed that I

[1:46:23] Trustee Bernardo: think you did are there any other

[1:46:27] Trustee Bernardo: trustees I'll

[1:46:29] Voice 11: second the motion the amendment if that just moves us along because I did propose

[1:46:35] Voice 11: I was that we would just acknowledge the constraints

[1:46:38] Voice 11: out of the policies.

[1:46:40] Trustee Bernardo: To be clear now, whatever comments people had before,

[1:46:45] Trustee Bernardo: we have the motion's been seconded, it's on the floor.

[1:46:48] Trustee Bernardo: The motion is to amend with that language,

[1:46:51] Trustee Bernardo: the previous motion.

[1:46:54] Trustee Bernardo: So do we have comments about who wishes to speak

[1:46:58] Trustee Bernardo: to the proposed amendment?

[1:47:01] Voice 8: And I see Mr. Myler has his hand up.

[1:47:06] Voice 8: Oops, not anymore.

[1:47:08] Voice 8: more all right does anybody wish to speak to this motion we've uh trustee evans do you have

[1:47:16] Voice 8: any comments about it or no

[1:47:19] Voice 9: i was i was just simply making this motion to try and address

[1:47:22] Voice 9: some of the concerns that were being raised about the the original motion all

[1:47:27] Trustee Bernardo: right thank you

[1:47:27] Trustee Bernardo: trustee elliott

[1:47:28] Trustee Elliott: before we vote on this um may i suggest a different resolution that we might

[1:47:34] Trustee Elliott: consider i know i i know this isn't i

[1:47:36] Trustee Bernardo: don't think i don't trustee elliott let's we're just going to

[1:47:39] Trustee Bernardo: to confuse ourselves by the juggling motions this is what's

[1:47:43] Trustee Bernardo: before the floor let's deal with this

[1:47:45] Trustee Bernardo: i i

[1:47:47] Trustee Bernardo: just think there's a

[1:47:48] Trustee Elliott: better i think there's a better way of addressing this but i'll i guess

[1:47:51] Trustee Elliott: we have to go to the vote before we consider something else so i

[1:47:54] Trustee Bernardo: think we do i don't see

[1:47:58] Trustee Bernardo: any further comments about this i'm going to put this up for a vote uh all those in favor of the

[1:48:02] Trustee Bernardo: amendment to

[1:48:04] Voice 8: the original motion please raise your hands can't find my oh

[1:48:14] Voice 10: i can't i can't find

[1:48:17] Voice 10: my hand to raise somehow it's

[1:48:19] Trustee Bernardo: disappeared i'm raising

[1:48:20] Trustee Bernardo: the hand we see it please lower your hands

[1:48:23] Trustee Bernardo: yeah all those

[1:48:25] Voice 9: my screen froze did we just go to the vote yes

[1:48:29] Trustee Bernardo: oh

[1:48:30] Voice 9: okay never mind uh

[1:48:32] Voice 8: all those

[1:48:32] Voice 8: opposed to the amendment do we have uh six opposed and how

[1:48:50] Trustee Bernardo: many in favor i saw four in favor all

[1:48:54] Trustee Bernardo: All right, well, the motion's defeated.

[1:48:55] Trustee Bernardo: That returns us back to the original motion.

[1:49:00] Trustee Bernardo: And Trustee Elliot, I didn't want to hear

[1:49:04] Trustee Bernardo: the other point that you had to make,

[1:49:06] Trustee Bernardo: but you did have a point to make.

[1:49:08] Trustee Bernardo: So let's hear from you before we go to Trustee Peterson.

[1:49:11] Trustee Elliott: Appreciate that, Chair.

[1:49:13] Trustee Elliott: I do strongly urge this body

[1:49:16] Trustee Elliott: to stick to financial considerations.

[1:49:19] Trustee Elliott: So to that end, I would suggest a resolution,

[1:49:23] Trustee Elliott: something to the effect of that FPC requests staff

[1:49:26] Trustee Elliott: to provide analysis of...

[1:49:29] Trustee Elliott: We've

[1:49:30] Voice 9: got a motion on the floor currently.

[1:49:31] Voice 9: We have to defeat this motion

[1:49:33] Voice 9: before we can put another motion on the floor.

[1:49:35] Voice 9: Okay.

[1:49:36] Trustee Bernardo: Are you proposing an amendment, Trustee Elliott,

[1:49:38] Trustee Bernardo: to the existing motion?

[1:49:40] Trustee Elliott: I guess I am, actually.

[1:49:42] Trustee Elliott: So

[1:49:43] Trustee Bernardo: how would you amend it?

[1:49:44] Trustee Bernardo: It's an exercise in wordsmithing here, not replacement.

[1:49:50] Trustee Elliott: Okay.

[1:49:50] Trustee Elliott: Okay, then I think mine is a little bit too different

[1:49:55] Trustee Elliott: to be an amendment.

[1:49:56] Trustee Elliott: So I would propose a different resolution

[1:49:57] Trustee Elliott: once we have the vote on this one.

[1:49:59] Trustee Bernardo: All right, thank you.

[1:50:01] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Peterson.

[1:50:04] Voice 5: So I had amendment to propose,

[1:50:07] Voice 5: which is to after the word,

[1:50:13] Voice 5: to change the word option to options,

[1:50:18] Voice 5: and then it would continue for reducing the financial cost

[1:50:22] Voice 5: of LTC meetings period that would be the motion

[1:50:27] Voice 8: or the amendment I would propose

[1:50:33] Voice 8: reducing the financial cost of LTC meetings do you wish to speak to that I

[1:50:42] Voice 8: think that

[1:50:43] Trustee Bernardo: it I sorry I once that language is up there I guess we need to

[1:50:49] Trustee Bernardo: see if there's a seconder for it and then we'll go to a discussion I second

[1:50:56] Trustee Bernardo: seconded by trustee evans so what we now have is another amendment motion on the before the floor

[1:51:02] Trustee Bernardo: that financial planning committee amends the motion by changing the word option to options

[1:51:10] Trustee Bernardo: and add the language for reducing the financial costs of lpc meetings

[1:51:17] Trustee Bernardo: trustee peterson do you wish to speak to that

[1:51:19] Voice 5: yes uh thank you i think that this um

[1:51:23] Voice 5: I believe this addresses some of the concerns I had heard about the previous wording.

[1:51:30] Voice 5: I think it stays more in our lane, and I hope that it's more easily achieved than the previous version.

[1:51:43] Voice 5: And I'll leave it at

[1:51:44] Voice 8: that. Thank you.

[1:51:46] Voice 8: Christy Elliott.

[1:51:49] Trustee Elliott: I think we're going in the right direction, so I will attempt to support this.

[1:51:54] Trustee Elliott: um might i suggest we include the word analysis options and analysis um and then some reporting

[1:52:03] Trustee Elliott: back to executive committee and this body would probably be advised where is this going to go

[1:52:09] Trustee Elliott: not just to fbc it should go to ec as well so i don't know if that would be considered a friendly

[1:52:15] Trustee Elliott: amendment or no we don't do that um so options

[1:52:20] Voice 13: and analysis um

[1:52:24] Voice 8: and

[1:52:30] Trustee Elliott: then we don't have to have

[1:52:31] Trustee Elliott: you know that might include ltc meetings electronically or having chairs attend

[1:52:36] Trustee Elliott: electronically there could be a whole range and so i think that does point us in the right

[1:52:41] Trustee Elliott: direction so i'll support this amendment well

[1:52:46] Trustee Bernardo: i'm not sure where you're going with all that

[1:52:48] Trustee Bernardo: that Trustee Elliott, you're proposing an amendment

[1:52:50] Trustee Bernardo: to the motion to amend.

[1:52:56] Trustee Bernardo: It's getting a little complicated here.

[1:52:59] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Peterson, this is your motion.

[1:53:02] Trustee Bernardo: Do you have anything to say about what Trustee Elliott-

[1:53:05] Trustee Bernardo: Thank

[1:53:07] Voice 5: you, Chair.

[1:53:08] Voice 5: I am happy to, if the wording has changed

[1:53:13] Voice 5: to options and analysis, I'm perfectly content with that.

[1:53:19] Trustee Bernardo: well um procedurally i'm not quite sure what we're supposed to do about that

[1:53:24] Trustee Bernardo: um mr marler i'm calling upon you yet again

[1:53:28] Voice 1: yeah in the past we've done friendly amendments where

[1:53:32] Voice 1: if everybody's okay with some minor change like that we just make it easier but technically uh

[1:53:38] Voice 1: what you would do is uh you can go to another uh resolution to amend the amendment uh but i

[1:53:45] Voice 1: go more than that like if if there's changes to this amendment uh you could just say amend

[1:53:52] Voice 1: the amendment by adding the word and analysis and there's something else there um advice

[1:53:58] Voice 1: to ellie that you wanted to include but beyond that um just keep it as simple as you can

[1:54:05] Voice 1: and go back to the original

[1:54:06] Voice 8: uh resolution all right

[1:54:15] Trustee Bernardo: let's uh let's go back to trustee peterson's amendment motion i'm looking to you now trustee

[1:54:23] Trustee Bernardo: peterson you've heard what trustee elliott's got to say if you consider okay with amendment

[1:54:29] Trustee Bernardo: and you're fine let's put it in and then that's going to be and that'll be unless anybody objects

[1:54:37] Trustee Bernardo: to putting it in that'll that change will have happened by general consent to that motion

[1:54:42] Voice 5: so

[1:54:44] Voice 5: So, okay.

[1:54:44] Voice 5: Thank you, chair.

[1:54:45] Voice 5: So I'm happy to have and analysis added after options

[1:54:52] Voice 5: and to add and report back to FPC and executive committee.

[1:55:00] Voice 8: And I believe the thing that has to be changed

[1:55:05] Voice 8: to the recorder is the paragraph above that.

[1:55:12] Voice 8: But the trustee Peterson's original motion,

[1:55:15] Voice 8: just dive into that and put the changes in there.

[1:55:18] Voice 8: the one that's being amended is trustee peterson's amendment correct but it's

[1:55:31] Trustee Bernardo: already up on the

[1:55:32] Trustee Bernardo: screen immediately above is it not oh sorry that was a defeated one my mistake i apologize so

[1:55:39] Trustee Bernardo: chair

[1:55:40] Voice 17: if i may yes i

[1:55:43] Voice 17: just need some clarification is the committee considering this as a friendly

[1:55:49] Voice 17: amendment in which case i can just simply change the words or is the committee considering this

[1:55:55] Voice 17: amending motion this

[1:55:58] Trustee Bernardo: is a friendly amendment to the amending motion all

[1:56:03] Voice 17: right so you as chair

[1:56:04] Voice 17: are you declaring that it's a friendly man okay then in that case i can just change it as is right

[1:56:11] Voice 5: to add and report

[1:56:13] Voice 8: back to fbc and executive committee and i think that's it all right so that

[1:56:32] Voice 8: that um since

[1:56:33] Trustee Bernardo: it's a friendly motion it's already been this amending motion has already been second

[1:56:38] Trustee Bernardo: Do we have any further discussion about this?

[1:56:40] Trustee Bernardo: I see Trustee Evans has her hand up.

[1:56:43] Voice 9: Just a quick question.

[1:56:45] Voice 9: Is the new wording meant to be folded

[1:56:49] Voice 9: into the original motion

[1:56:51] Voice 9: or is it mainly replacing the original motion?

[1:56:54] Voice 9: Because I'm just wondering where some of this,

[1:56:57] Voice 9: some of these wordings are going.

[1:57:00] Voice 8: Replacing.

[1:57:11] Voice 8: Do we have any further discussion on the amending motion?

[1:57:18] Voice 8: Trustee Peterson, you have something to add?

[1:57:20] Voice 5: Mr. Chair, if you don't mind,

[1:57:22] Voice 5: I'll just take a moment and I'll read if the amendment passes, the motion would then say that the Financial Planning Committee requests staff to look at options and analysis for reducing the financial costs of LPC meetings and report back to FBC and EC.

[1:57:45] Voice 5: If this amendment passes, that's what the amended motion would say.

[1:57:50] Voice 8: All right, just for clarity.

[1:57:55] Voice 8: Chair Bernardo, may I ask Board Trustee Peterson to repeat that, please?

[1:58:03] Voice 8: Okay, so if the amendment

[1:58:06] Voice 5: passes, then the amended motion would be, would read that Financial Planning Committee requests staff to look at options and analysis for reducing the financial costs of LTC meetings and report back to FBC and EC.

[1:58:26] Voice 5: see so the encouraging local trust committees to pass a resolution part would be not in there well

[1:58:34] Voice 5: your

[1:58:35] Trustee Bernardo: mending motion trustee peterson doesn't say that it's to be deleted so it doesn't do the job

[1:58:43] Trustee Bernardo: you want it to do unfortunately i

[1:58:45] Trustee Elliott: believe he did originally actually that it would replace i did

[1:58:50] Voice 5: say when i first made it that it would that that would be the end of the motion and then we went

[1:58:56] Voice 5: back and added report back to so i i apologize this motion's on the fly thing is never

[1:59:01] Voice 5: as simple as it could be

[1:59:04] Voice 13: frankenstein motion

[1:59:08] Trustee Bernardo: okay trustee peterson let's cut to the chase here can you fix your amending motion so it reads the

[1:59:15] Trustee Bernardo: way you want it to read and okay yes

[1:59:20] Voice 8: so the amending motion

[1:59:22] Trustee Bernardo: hang on let me explain what i

[1:59:23] Trustee Bernardo: intend to do here just so everybody understands this is all getting very confusing we're layering

[1:59:28] Trustee Bernardo: a whole bunch of stuff here i'm going to suggest you change the amending motion to you what you

[1:59:32] Trustee Bernardo: want it to be somebody seconds it we've had the discussion we'll put it up to vote

[1:59:37] Voice 5: okay okay thank

[1:59:39] Voice 5: you chair i will i will endeavor to do just that so the amending motion would be that the financial

[1:59:45] Voice 5: planning committee amend the motion by removing the text after the word option and by changing

[1:59:56] Voice 5: changing the word option to options and analysis.

[2:00:00] Voice 5: and to add for reducing the financial costs of LTC meetings

[2:00:03] Voice 5: and report back to FPC and EC.

[2:00:06] Voice 8: And you want that language put into the amendment?

[2:00:16] Voice 5: I thought that then that provides complete clarity.

[2:00:19] Voice 5: I'm talking about removing everything after the word option.

[2:00:24] Voice 5: This is in the amendment motion.

[2:00:27] Voice 5: Yeah, right.

[2:00:28] Voice 5: And then

[2:00:28] Voice 8: changing the word option to options and analysis.

[2:00:37] Voice 8: Mr. Barlow I don't think the that's where the

[2:00:41] Trustee Bernardo: change the change needs to go into the amending

[2:00:44] Trustee Bernardo: motion it's not that this would result in stuff that's let's just drop that just go straight back

[2:00:51] Voice 15: is that right

[2:00:52] Voice 15: Trustee Peterson like

[2:00:54] Voice 5: yes just so that after so that it would read that the

[2:00:58] Voice 5: financial planning committee amend the motion by removing the text after

[2:01:07] Voice 8: the word option

[2:01:13] Voice 8: comma changing the word option to options and then us i think that's exactly what it should

[2:01:20] Voice 8: be there right there trustee evans if

[2:01:28] Voice 9: you've removed the word option it's no longer there

[2:01:31] Voice 9: so i would i would have it read oh

[2:01:33] Voice 8: it should be after

[2:01:33] Voice 9: that the financial planning committee amend

[2:01:37] Voice 9: the motion by removing the text after the word option okay never mind i i stand corrected

[2:01:44] Voice 9: to all right

[2:01:46] Voice 8: um just for

[2:01:50] Trustee Bernardo: abundance of clarity for the record can we have a seconder for this

[2:01:53] Trustee Bernardo: i know it's unorthodox but let's just clean this up we're first elliot is uh seconding i see

[2:01:58] Trustee Bernardo: all right we've discussed this um abundantly and perhaps too much the motions on the floor

[2:02:06] Trustee Bernardo: uh we've discussed all the relevant issues i'm putting the

[2:02:11] Voice 8: amending motion up for a vote

[2:02:12] Voice 8: those in favor please raise your hands okay please lower your hands those opposed please raise your

[2:02:26] Voice 8: hand christy harris

[2:02:28] Trustee Bernardo: is opposed i don't see any other the motion is passed and therefore the

[2:02:35] Trustee Bernardo: original motion uh by trustee evans is now amended so could we please have that amended

[2:02:46] Voice 8: language up on the screen and then when that's up I will put that motion up for a vote we've spent

[2:02:56] Voice 8: enough time on this item all right it's up on the screen that's the motion that financial planning

[2:04:07] Trustee Bernardo: committee request staff to look at the options and analysis for reducing the financial cost of

[2:04:11] Trustee Bernardo: LTC meetings and

[2:04:12] Voice 8: to report back to FPC and EC Mr. Trustee Peterson you're relentless you have your

[2:04:21] Voice 8: hand up thank you apologies okay that's the motion we've discussed this thing to death it's up for a

[2:04:31] Voice 8: vote uh those in favor of this resolution please raise your hand please lower your hands those

[2:04:45] Voice 8: opposed please raise your hand one christy harris the motion is carried uh

[2:04:54] Trustee Bernardo: i see it is just a little

[2:04:56] Trustee Bernardo: after 12. uh let me tell you how i intend to proceed i intend for us to continue the meeting

[2:05:01] Trustee Bernardo: until 12 15 and then break for a half hour for lunch we have a lot to do uh and then return at

[2:05:08] Trustee Bernardo: 1245 and in the interim let's address or receive the briefing on trust council meeting costs at

[2:05:17] Voice 8: 7.4.3 director mobs

[2:05:25] Voice 2: yes sir so at the october meeting financial planning committee asked staff

[2:05:31] Voice 2: to bring back a briefing discussing the true costs of in-person trust council meetings in terms of

[2:05:37] Voice 2: dollars and in terms of staff capacity so staff have prepared the analysis it's presented in this

[2:05:42] Voice 2: report. We've looked at the most recent, I think it's eight meetings, most of which were held in

[2:05:48] Voice 2: person, two of which were held electronically via Zoom. What we see when we look at the average of

[2:05:54] Voice 2: these meetings is that in-person meetings cost about $31,000 each. That number is consistent

[2:06:01] Voice 2: if the meetings are held on some of the larger Gulf Island islands, such as Gabriola and North

[2:06:08] Voice 2: Pender and or if they're held in Victoria or Nanaimo so we're seeing very similar costs held

[2:06:14] Voice 2: in the Gulf Islands and on Vancouver Island. Of course electronic meetings are much cheaper there's

[2:06:19] Voice 2: about a thousand dollar cost for each electronic meeting and that's primarily for the chair of

[2:06:24] Voice 2: trust council to travel to Victoria so he can chair the meeting from the Victoria boardroom

[2:06:29] Voice 2: as of course the electronics there facilitate much smoother meeting chairing than if the chair

[2:06:35] Voice 2: was not in the boardroom with staff. In terms of staff capacity, planning for Trust Council

[2:06:40] Voice 2: meetings that are held in the Gulf Islands takes a lot more staff time than planning for Trust

[2:06:47] Voice 2: Council meetings held on Vancouver Island. And of course, there's much less time involved in

[2:06:52] Voice 2: planning for electronic meetings. The executive coordinator is on leave currently, so I don't have

[2:06:58] Voice 2: actual number of hours, but it's known that it is a lot more work to plan for on-island

[2:07:06] Voice 2: in-person trust council meetings. So FPC requested this information. We've presented it here. I think

[2:07:13] Voice 2: the primary reason FPC requested it was to help inform budget recommendations in terms of dollars

[2:07:19] Voice 2: to include in the draft budget for trust council meetings. So if there's direction for staff to

[2:07:24] Voice 2: amend the draft budget, we can certainly do that. The current draft of the budget has four in-person

[2:07:30] Voice 2: meetings funded, so there is $126,000 included in the draft budget which reflects $31,500 each

[2:07:39] Voice 2: per in-person meeting. Happy to take questions.

[2:07:44] Voice 8: Rosie Evans. Thank

[2:07:48] Voice 9: you. I noticed that in the

[2:07:51] Voice 9: table of the expense items, the catering had jumped up since the beginning of the term of

[2:07:57] Voice 9: this trust set of trustees it tripled over the last in-person meeting that was held in Nanaimo

[2:08:02] Voice 9: March 2022. My question is can we put a cap on the dollar amount of catering because catering

[2:08:11] Voice 9: looks like it costs more than the accommodation and by putting a cap of say $10,000 that will

[2:08:19] Voice 9: bring the overall cost back down to about the 25 mark instead of the 31 mark. That's a topic that

[2:08:27] Voice 9: that I think should be looked at

[2:08:28] Voice 9: just given the extremely high expense of food.

[2:08:35] Voice 8: Trustee Yates.

[2:08:38] Voice 8: Thank

[2:08:39] Voice 3: you, Chair Bernardo.

[2:08:39] Voice 3: I was actually going to say

[2:08:41] Voice 3: exactly what Trustee Evans just said.

[2:08:44] Voice 3: So thank you for that.

[2:08:45] Voice 3: But I also have a question.

[2:08:47] Voice 3: I'm not sure if Director Mobs can answer this.

[2:08:51] Voice 3: I'm just looking at the huge amount of time

[2:08:55] Voice 3: and work it takes for the executive coordinator

[2:08:58] Voice 3: coordinator to coordinate these council meetings when they're in person. And I find this really,

[2:09:06] Voice 3: really troubling because I wonder what the differences are between now and say, I'm sorry

[2:09:15] Voice 3: to say this, 30 years ago when I was a trustee and all of the council meetings were in person

[2:09:21] Voice 3: and and some of them are on really small islands and um so not the cost the actual work i i don't

[2:09:30] Voice 3: know if anyone can actually answer that question perhaps um perhaps cio hotzenfeller can answer

[2:09:36] Voice 8: that um probably we need to to touch

[2:09:44] Voice 19: on our longest serving staff member at least at the

[2:09:48] Voice 19: executive level and that would be david marler um i think that uh there it was a different time

[2:09:58] Voice 19: um there was accommodation um i'm using the word cultural again there were cultural norms on

[2:10:06] Voice 19: islands where um trustees stayed at people's houses yeah um they shared meals together

[2:10:14] Voice 19: other um there weren't the same food safe requirements with respect to everyone involved

[2:10:21] Voice 19: there were less expectations um the um we now bring a larger staff contingent i expect than

[2:10:30] Voice 19: you saw 30 years ago we're hauling a lot of electronic equipment we have to rent a van for

[2:10:36] Voice 19: instance you know it's it's a um i think we're also seeing a rise in food costs and accommodation

[2:10:43] Voice 19: costs you're all sorry to

[2:10:45] Voice 3: interrupt I don't mean the cost I really I really get the cost it's

[2:10:51] Voice 3: really clear to me I meant the actual labor like you know how difficult it is for the executive

[2:10:57] Voice 3: coordinator to do this compared to 30 years ago and I just don't I'm not sure anyone can answer

[2:11:04] Voice 3: that it's

[2:11:05] Voice 19: more of a boutique service it's more it's

[2:11:09] Trustee Bernardo: a more I see Mr. Marler has his hand up and

[2:11:12] Trustee Bernardo: And the CEO had referred to him as a source of wisdom and authority on this topic.

[2:11:17] Trustee Bernardo: So I'm going to refer to him to answer Trustee Yates' question.

[2:11:24] Voice 1: Yeah.

[2:11:24] Voice 1: Okay.

[2:11:25] Voice 1: Thank you.

[2:11:25] Voice 1: Just from my experience being here for 29 years, I can probably help a little bit.

[2:11:30] Voice 1: The CEO is on the right track, though, with the response.

[2:11:33] Voice 1: It is more complicated now than it was in the past for very many reasons.

[2:11:38] Voice 1: The big one, I think, is the streaming, the electronic system, but also the need for IT support at the meeting, so that creates more staff time there.

[2:11:52] Voice 1: For the executive coordinator, I think it's always been a very involved job for that person.

[2:12:01] Voice 1: And I know the previous executive coordinator has spent most of her time working on trust council on the three months leading up to trust council, everything from making sure there is accommodation, you know, water taxes, float planes, accommodations and travel and catering are a big part of it.

[2:12:25] Voice 1: So I'm not sure that has changed a lot, but I think the demands on the executive coordinator in other areas of the organization may have infringed on the ability to do that.

[2:12:37] Voice 1: And then, of course, the pandemic meant we didn't do it for a while.

[2:12:40] Voice 1: So other duties became part of that position.

[2:12:45] Voice 1: And then you go back to it and you have to make room to allow for that person to put together a good trust counsel.

[2:12:55] Voice 19: the other thing i did and i will just be very brief mr chair is when i first came to the trust

[2:13:00] Voice 19: i realized that trust programs committee and other committees had no administrative support

[2:13:05] Voice 19: and they still don't so what we what there was part-time assistance when i first got here to

[2:13:11] Voice 19: the executive coordinator and i removed that and reallocated those administrative resources

[2:13:16] Voice 19: and made it more a full-time job and you know i have to wear that decision um ultimately thank you

[2:13:24] Voice 19: All

[2:13:25] Trustee Bernardo: right. Thank you. We're getting very close to the lunch break here. One more comment here, or if we can be very quick, maybe two. For us, T. Patrick.

[2:13:33] Trustee Patrick: Let's just face it. Organizing an event of this nature is a huge, costly event. And our administrative assistant has done an amazing job pulling it off.

[2:13:45] Trustee Patrick: off. Last term, we went to saying there would be two electronic and two in person. I know there's

[2:13:52] Trustee Patrick: why we can't meet in person, but we did that very much. That's $60,000, folks, having two

[2:13:58] Trustee Patrick: electronic meetings. And we also went to limiting them to Nanaimo and Victoria because those were

[2:14:03] Trustee Patrick: the cheapest and easiest locations to have them. That's where we ended up. And I think we need to

[2:14:08] Trustee Patrick: end up there again.

[2:14:10] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Evans, briefly, please.

[2:14:13] Voice 9: Thank you. My original question wasn't

[2:14:16] Voice 9: answered do we have the ability to put a cap on catering and

[2:14:21] Voice 8: if so i'd like to make that motion

[2:14:27] Voice 8: um director mobs you can answer the question uh

[2:14:31] Voice 2: yeah i'll do my best i'm not sure that we would

[2:14:34] Voice 2: be able to do that in all instances um our most recent trust council meeting on north pender we

[2:14:39] Voice 2: brought in an external caterer as of course we were at a community hall if we are looking at a

[2:14:45] Voice 2: a venue that provides accommodation and the meeting location, they often require us to use

[2:14:50] Voice 2: their in-house catering. And in those instances, we are paying what is required. I'm not sure how

[2:14:56] Voice 2: much negotiating room we have there. So I'm not sure if that's a feasible option when we're looking

[2:15:04] Voice 2: at sort of the all-in-house packaging.

[2:15:07] Voice 9: I guess what I'm getting at is, do we really need to have

[2:15:10] Voice 9: a cooked breakfast a cooked lunch and a cooked supper what about that like and i mean we i've

[2:15:16] Voice 9: organized these in events in the past as well where you'd have a simplified breakfast and

[2:15:23] Voice 9: sandwiches and soup for lunch instead of a fully cooked meal there are ways to reduce the cost of

[2:15:29] Voice 8: that catering doesn't

[2:15:30] Voice 9: cost more than the accommodation and whole rental put together

[2:15:34] Voice 9: there all

[2:15:35] Trustee Bernardo: right thank you for that trustee evans but um just before we break for lunch

[2:15:40] Trustee Bernardo: i do need to make the comment that the resolution you're proposing to make i'm not sure

[2:15:48] Trustee Bernardo: and we'll address this after the lunch break but i'm not sure it's

[2:15:51] Trustee Bernardo: appropriate or valid this body does not have the authority to pass resolutions to bind staff to

[2:15:59] Trustee Bernardo: put caps on expenditures or anything like that that that authority ultimately all rests with

[2:16:05] Trustee Bernardo: trust council we're ultimately an advisory body um we could advise uh trust council to put a cap

[2:16:14] Trustee Bernardo: on catering whether we want to expend energy on i'll be blunt micromanaging the staff on this

[2:16:22] Trustee Bernardo: front uh that's a question but you know what uh let's take a break let's return at 12 45

[2:16:28] Trustee Bernardo: um

[2:16:30] Voice 8: thank you everybody we're reset

[2:44:58] Voice 8: hello everybody it is 12 45 do we okay here we are mr okay perhaps staff could uh start

[2:45:14] Voice 8: the live streaming uh chair

[2:45:23] Voice 17: bernardo the live streaming doesn't stop during recess or breaks

[2:45:29] Voice 17: okay thank you which is why we put up a notice indicating that you were in recess okay thank

[2:45:35] Trustee Bernardo: you for that um we have returned now uh the meeting has returned from its recess and it's

[2:45:41] Trustee Bernardo: resuming business where we had left it before was we were still on item um 7.4.3 dealing with trust

[2:45:51] Trustee Bernardo: council meeting costs and there had been some discussion about that and where we'd left it

[2:45:56] Trustee Bernardo: before is that uh trustee evans was contemplating motion uh i sounded a word of caution and there

[2:46:06] Trustee Bernardo: There were other trustees who had points to make

[2:46:08] Trustee Bernardo: and their hands are up and I now turn to Trustee Yates.

[2:46:15] Voice 3: Thank you, Chair Bernardo.

[2:46:16] Voice 3: I just wanted to follow up on a comment made

[2:46:18] Voice 3: by Trustee Patrick about the cost of the on-island meetings.

[2:46:23] Voice 3: Just from this information that we have in front of us,

[2:46:29] Voice 3: Trustee Patrick mentioned that it'd be cheaper to meet

[2:46:32] Voice 3: in Nanaimo or Victoria, but in fact, oddly enough,

[2:46:37] Voice 3: and a surprise to me,

[2:46:38] Voice 3: the cheapest meeting that we had in person was on Gabriola.

[2:46:43] Voice 3: And that doesn't mean I want them to be here

[2:46:45] Voice 3: because that would be very boring.

[2:46:47] Voice 3: But it does look at least from this sample

[2:46:51] Voice 3: that we have here that Gabriola was quite a bit cheaper.

[2:46:56] Trustee Bernardo: I understood Trustee Patrick's comment to be

[2:46:59] Trustee Bernardo: that really focused on the idea that two of the meetings

[2:47:05] Trustee Bernardo: that the Trust Council have

[2:47:07] Trustee Bernardo: should probably revert back to electronic altogether.

[2:47:13] Trustee Bernardo: That's my understanding.

[2:47:14] Trustee Bernardo: She's on the list here.

[2:47:16] Trustee Bernardo: She may address that point.

[2:47:17] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Graham.

[2:47:19] Voice 4: Thank you, Chair.

[2:47:21] Voice 4: Considering this fiscal year

[2:47:24] Voice 4: looks like an extraordinary tax increase

[2:47:26] Voice 4: for our constituents

[2:47:27] Voice 4: and the fact that Trust Council

[2:47:30] Voice 4: has met in the past exclusively electronically

[2:47:33] Voice 4: and apparently the work accomplished was adequate.

[2:47:37] Voice 4: I would like to, I'm prepared to put a motion on

[2:47:41] Voice 4: to see if there's a support for having all meetings

[2:47:45] Voice 4: of the 24, 25 period to be conducted electronically

[2:47:49] Voice 4: at a savings of $120,000.

[2:47:54] Voice 4: So with the chairs, as I said,

[2:47:56] Voice 4: I'm prepared to put that motion on

[2:47:58] Voice 4: and we can move this discussion along quickly or not.

[2:48:00] Voice 4: not um so and

[2:48:02] Trustee Bernardo: to clarify uh trustee graham uh of course we don't have the authority to make that

[2:48:08] Trustee Bernardo: happen uh if you do make that motion i expect it would be a recommendation to trust council

[2:48:14] Trustee Bernardo: let it take that action is that correct yeah

[2:48:16] Voice 4: that is correct before

[2:48:19] Trustee Bernardo: you uh pull the trigger

[2:48:20] Trustee Bernardo: on that idea perhaps we should hear from trustee patrick who had her hand up and

[2:48:23] Trustee Bernardo: also trustee evans and then i'll come back to you okay yeah thank you thank

[2:48:29] Trustee Patrick: you an intriguing

[2:48:30] Trustee Patrick: thought there, David. The staff capacity, which is on the next page of the report on page 41,

[2:48:38] Trustee Patrick: it talks about the Gulf Islands as being the most effort for staff. So it's not just a cost issue,

[2:48:46] Trustee Patrick: it's the total cost to the organization of holding it on the Gulf Islands. And I still

[2:48:52] Trustee Patrick: am a proponent of finding other ways of getting trustees onto islands. I think it is of value for

[2:48:56] Trustee Patrick: them to travel and get to the islands and know the area. I mean, the reason why we ended up with

[2:49:03] Trustee Patrick: two before is I think there's huge value in having the March meetings in person. That's the final

[2:49:10] Trustee Patrick: budget battle of the year. And, you know, having at least one other meeting potentially in person

[2:49:18] Trustee Patrick: does allow us to maintain that camaraderie and good work of being together as a body.

[2:49:24] Trustee Patrick: it seemed to work well at the end of last year but we also had a pandemic that really messed us up

[2:49:29] Trustee Patrick: last term so hard to gauge thank

[2:49:34] Trustee Bernardo: you Christy Evans thank

[2:49:37] Voice 9: you I was just going to go back to

[2:49:39] Voice 9: putting my original motion as a suggestion for the capital funding but I understand that something

[2:49:46] Voice 9: else is going to be spoken to so I would just speak to the motion that's about to be brought

[2:49:50] Voice 9: brought up, and I'll raise this one later, is that having us meet in person really does help

[2:49:56] Voice 9: move discussions forward, especially for those of us that are in for internet service areas like

[2:50:03] Voice 9: myself, so I'll still have to travel regardless, especially for all-day meetings. So I would

[2:50:10] Voice 9: maybe request that it just be cut to two rather than all, and I'll come

[2:50:16] Voice 8: back to my motion later.

[2:50:17] Voice 8: time all right thank you um trustee yates thank

[2:50:24] Voice 3: you chair bernardo i did want to support trustee

[2:50:26] Voice 3: evans motion if she goes ahead and makes it about putting a cap on the catering because i was

[2:50:32] Voice 3: surprised at how much that cost and i'm sure we could lower that cost so i hope that comes forward

[2:50:38] Voice 3: thank you i

[2:50:41] Trustee Bernardo: see a future where we eat a lot of sandwiches um before we return uh to you trustee

[2:50:48] Trustee Bernardo: Graham I just want to point out a basic point here the types of meetings the cost of the meetings of

[2:50:56] Trustee Bernardo: trust council meetings are a function of the types of meetings the trust council has and that is in

[2:51:03] Trustee Bernardo: turn a function of how trust council has chosen to conduct its business which right now is strictly

[2:51:10] Trustee Bernardo: through quarterly meetings and they're and that's why they're so extended the trustee Boland at last

[2:51:17] Trustee Bernardo: trust council had tried to raise the possibility or the issue uh that in fact i know she's raised

[2:51:24] Trustee Bernardo: uh previously with the executive committee about uh observing that it doesn't actually have to be

[2:51:31] Trustee Bernardo: that way there may be alternatives to how we structure uh at the trust council structures

[2:51:36] Trustee Bernardo: its business that could be cost effective but also still deliver on that face-to-face

[2:51:45] Trustee Bernardo: component that's necessary it's not this isn't the forum for deciding what is essentially a

[2:51:54] Trustee Bernardo: governance issue but the financial aspect of it does leave it open to fbc to to pass resolutions

[2:52:03] Trustee Bernardo: recommending the trust council explore options to change the structure of meetings

[2:52:09] Trustee Bernardo: I confess I'm a little anxious about going to Trust Council with specifically prescriptive management suggestions before the various factors have been examined in more detail.

[2:52:29] Trustee Bernardo: Anyhow, that's my comment on that.

[2:52:31] Trustee Bernardo: Back to you, Trustee Graham.

[2:52:34] Voice 4: Thank you, Chair.

[2:52:35] Voice 4: um again so considering we are the financial planning committee our focus should be on

[2:52:41] Voice 4: financial responsibility um historically trust council has managed to do its work electronically

[2:52:48] Voice 4: we are looking at an extraordinary tax increase for our constituents

[2:52:52] Voice 4: and and and it's only one year of a four-year term that i'm suggesting so i move that the

[2:52:59] Voice 4: the Financial Planning Committee advise Trust Council

[2:53:03] Voice 4: to schedule the 2024-2025 Trust Council meetings

[2:53:10] Voice 4: be

[2:53:11] Voice 8: held electronically.

[2:53:14] Voice 8: Thank you.

[2:53:16] Voice 8: I see a hand raised by Trustee Boland.

[2:53:19] Voice 8: Are you seconding the motion?

[2:53:21] Voice 11: I'll second the motion and I have just a few comments.

[2:53:25] Voice 10: Is that okay at this stage?

[2:53:26] Voice 10: No?

[2:53:30] Trustee Bernardo: That's fine.

[2:53:31] Trustee Bernardo: unless the trustee Graham has anything he wishes to add

[2:53:35] Trustee Bernardo: to like, now that we have the motion has been seconded,

[2:53:39] Trustee Bernardo: it's on the floor, it's before the committee to decide.

[2:53:42] Trustee Bernardo: And I'm wondering if trustee Graham would like

[2:53:45] Trustee Bernardo: the opportunity to speak to it first

[2:53:48] Trustee Bernardo: before we get into the wider discussion.

[2:53:50] Voice 4: Or a future point.

[2:53:52] Voice 4: Yeah, so I have outlined my three platforms.

[2:53:57] Voice 4: I will admit, I really enjoy

[2:53:59] Voice 4: in-person trust council meetings.

[2:54:01] Voice 4: So this is not coming from an aversion to working with my co-trustees on a one-to-one basis.

[2:54:07] Voice 4: This is strictly a financial perspective.

[2:54:11] Voice 4: And I'll just leave it at that.

[2:54:12] Voice 4: Thank you, Trent.

[2:54:13] Voice 4: Thank you, Trent.

[2:54:15] Voice 4: Trustee Boland?

[2:54:17] Voice 11: Yeah, I think that from a financial perspective and efficiency in some ways, because those three-day events are quite wearing.

[2:54:31] Voice 11: So let's not forget, 125,000 is a 1.5% load on our budget.

[2:54:41] Voice 11: So it's a significant cost saving if we, you know, remove it.

[2:54:49] Voice 11: And I would also hope that we could have a good discussion at December Trust Council on just reorganising, reformatting the calendar of meetings for other reasons.

[2:55:02] Voice 11: But I definitely support, I would support this motion because it's a significant reduction on the budget.

[2:55:10] Voice 8: Thanks.

[2:55:13] Voice 8: Trustee Evans.

[2:55:14] Voice 8: Thank you. I

[2:55:17] Voice 9: would not support this motion as it stands to have all of the 2024-25 meetings

[2:55:23] Voice 9: be held electronically. We have some difficult discussions to come up and for us to be able to

[2:55:29] Voice 9: be in the same room, especially when we've got any in-camera conversations that are occurring,

[2:55:35] Voice 9: for us to be able to hold open, free discussions is vitally important for us to make sound

[2:55:41] Voice 9: decisions. So I can't support all of the meetings being held electronically. I would be in support

[2:55:47] Voice 9: of at

[2:55:49] Voice 8: a maximum half of them. Thank you.

[2:55:56] Voice 8: Trustee Graham, you had your hand up again. Do you wish to respond?

[2:56:00] Voice 4: I don't wish to respond, but I've been advised by Director Mobs that the word

[2:56:04] Voice 4: recommend would be more appropriate than the word advise. The motion is not mine. I believe

[2:56:10] Voice 4: that motion belongs to trust a financial planning committee but if i can make the my the change from

[2:56:17] Voice 4: the word advise to recommend um i would do that uh

[2:56:22] Trustee Bernardo: let's just pause there for a moment uh does

[2:56:24] Trustee Bernardo: anybody object to making that grammatical change then that change uh

[2:56:32] Voice 8: trustee graham shall be made

[2:56:34] Voice 8: as and be treated as a friendly amendment or whatever we want to call it so there that's done

[2:56:44] Voice 8: trustee peterson thank you chair i'll

[2:56:51] Voice 5: just be brief i don't support the motion as presented

[2:56:53] Voice 5: and i agree with the comments from uh trustee evans trustee

[2:57:00] Voice 8: luckham and thank you chair um

[2:57:05] Trustee Luckham: um i love david graham he's a great human being and i appreciate all the good work he does but i

[2:57:11] Trustee Luckham: do not i can't i cannot support this motion there's and i have a couple a couple other

[2:57:19] Trustee Luckham: the comments, but I'll try to keep it short. There is much more to council meetings than the

[2:57:29] Trustee Luckham: cost of meals or accommodation. The value goes to the discussion. And the discussion is, in many

[2:57:39] Trustee Luckham: cases, fueled by understanding each other, knowing each other, and having a human being across the

[2:57:47] Trustee Luckham: the table to talk to and so I am opposed to that notion of more electronic meetings at this scale

[2:57:55] Trustee Luckham: we can have electronic meetings almost anywhere and everywhere else and I would be less concerned

[2:58:01] Trustee Luckham: although certainly there's elements of that that come into play but my other comments are is you

[2:58:06] Trustee Luckham: know um the and not for me to recommend or advise this committee in any way really except that I'd

[2:58:15] Trustee Luckham: I'd like to share that the work of the financial planning committee is to provide an operating

[2:58:19] Trustee Luckham: budget for Islanders Trust.

[2:58:22] Trustee Luckham: If we chose to weigh into every issue associated with trust council meetings, these conversations

[2:58:30] Trustee Luckham: would be repeated ad nauseum across committees and council.

[2:58:34] Trustee Luckham: And I think we need to really focus on creating an operational budget for council and council

[2:58:41] Trustee Luckham: and each and every one of you can come to council

[2:58:44] Trustee Luckham: and make motions about electronic meetings,

[2:58:47] Trustee Luckham: about carpooling, about eating sandwiches, all of this.

[2:58:51] Trustee Luckham: It's up to the financial planning committee

[2:58:53] Trustee Luckham: to figure out how to do that.

[2:58:56] Trustee Luckham: That's enough for me.

[2:58:57] Trustee Luckham: Thank you.

[2:58:58] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, Trustee Patrick.

[2:59:01] Voice 8: I believe Trustee

[2:59:02] Trustee Patrick: Harris had his hand up before me.

[2:59:04] Trustee Patrick: I'll let him go first.

[2:59:05] Voice 6: Trustee Harris.

[2:59:08] Voice 6: Thank you.

[2:59:09] Voice 6: I'm kind of torn here on this,

[2:59:11] Voice 6: this but also just as um trustee luckham has mentioned um there's some huge conversations

[2:59:18] Voice 6: that could be had out of this because clearly in my view and i'm sure obviously in a few others

[2:59:24] Voice 6: there's some serious issues with trust council meetings the lengths um you know where they're

[2:59:32] Voice 6: being held i think the islands again so we can talk about this so we're blue in the face but

[2:59:38] Voice 6: i i'm torn at this point i'll just wait to hear what other people have to say thanks

[2:59:43] Voice 6: trustee patrick

[2:59:44] Trustee Patrick: well i was wondering what we were going to discuss for three days in december at

[2:59:49] Trustee Patrick: trust council and i think we just found our topic um i this to me that's what this is it's a

[2:59:54] Trustee Patrick: recommendation recommendation to trust council where we would debate it there i like would say

[2:59:59] Trustee Patrick: or maybe we should

[3:00:00] Trustee Patrick: have some in person some mix but um that's all i see this is is a recommendation to trust council

[3:00:06] Trustee Patrick: and we'll have a discussion and there we go uses up all three days

[3:00:12] Voice 8: dao uh

[3:00:14] Voice 19: mr chair just making sure

[3:00:17] Voice 19: that committee's aware that the meetings you're talking about are june 24 september 24 december

[3:00:24] Voice 19: 24 and march 25 specifically and uh the only um added consideration is june is the 50th anniversary

[3:00:34] Voice 19: of the islands trust so i don't know if what import that has or or not in terms of financial

[3:00:40] Voice 19: management but it would be perhaps consideration thank you

[3:00:44] Trustee Bernardo: trustee harris you still have your hand

[3:00:46] Trustee Bernardo: up i

[3:00:47] Voice 6: just put it back up um thank you um chair bernardo i've you know with i'm in support of

[3:00:53] Voice 6: this at this point again it's for 2024 2025 um i'd like what david uh what trustee graham has to say

[3:01:01] Voice 6: about this and

[3:01:02] Voice 8: uh i'm a support of it thank you uh you're up again trustee let come uh let's uh

[3:01:11] Voice 8: be

[3:01:11] Trustee Bernardo: to the point here sure

[3:01:13] Trustee Luckham: i guess if this is an ideal world and i want i wanted to find some

[3:01:18] Trustee Luckham: middle ground on meeting in person or electronic and where i would say i would offer then perhaps

[3:01:25] Trustee Luckham: perhaps we should consider holding all of our

[3:01:28] Trustee Luckham: in-person meetings, all four of them,

[3:01:31] Trustee Luckham: on Salt Spring Island, because it's an island community

[3:01:33] Trustee Luckham: and they have the facilities and capacity to do it.

[3:01:36] Trustee Luckham: So we need to think that all through very carefully.

[3:01:40] Trustee Luckham: Thank you.

[3:01:43] Trustee Bernardo: Well, I'm going to weigh in with a comment here,

[3:01:45] Trustee Bernardo: which is, I'm going to repeat what I said before,

[3:01:48] Trustee Bernardo: which is there's, as a financial committee,

[3:01:51] Trustee Bernardo: it's legitimate for us to be concerned about cost centers

[3:01:53] Trustee Bernardo: and to make observations and recommendations

[3:01:56] Trustee Bernardo: with a view to keeping the budget within reasonable boundaries it's open for us to make

[3:02:02] Trustee Bernardo: suggestions about changing practices within reason it's not our job to micromanage the business

[3:02:10] Trustee Bernardo: i worry a little bit that this this is verging into micromanagement i certainly would be more

[3:02:15] Trustee Bernardo: comfortable if we had a resolution to the effect that trust council be advised that this is a

[3:02:22] Trustee Bernardo: a serious cost and we're looking for efficiencies and that we would recommend the trust council

[3:02:34] Trustee Bernardo: reconsider how it structures its business meetings the frequency of them and to leave it more wide

[3:02:41] Trustee Bernardo: open in terms of finding a solution to this issue rather than saying okay the solution is just to

[3:02:46] Trustee Bernardo: to shut them down to shut down the in-person component it seems a little bit more complicated

[3:02:53] Trustee Bernardo: That's my contribution to that part of the discussion.

[3:02:55] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Harris, you're returning to the well.

[3:02:57] Trustee Bernardo: Thank you.

[3:02:59] Voice 6: I do like how this is just for the 2024-2025 schedule.

[3:03:06] Voice 6: Just in a comment to Trustee Luckham's comment

[3:03:10] Voice 6: about everything being held on Salt Spring.

[3:03:12] Voice 6: You know, yeah, it sounds kind of great,

[3:03:14] Voice 6: but for some reason I'm thinking, you know,

[3:03:17] Voice 6: Victoria or Nanaimo, Nanaimo may be a better place

[3:03:21] Voice 6: because of it's more centrally located.

[3:03:24] Voice 6: Anyhow, honestly, I'm worried

[3:03:26] Voice 6: that we're going to see trust council speaking about this

[3:03:29] Voice 6: as trustee Patrick has so eloquently stated,

[3:03:32] Voice 6: he's speaking about this for three days.

[3:03:34] Voice 6: We have way bigger fish to fry

[3:03:36] Voice 6: and this is actually a pretty good way

[3:03:38] Voice 6: if somebody wants to stall

[3:03:39] Voice 6: and I'm not referring to trustee Patrick

[3:03:42] Voice 6: by any means at this point,

[3:03:44] Voice 6: but we have some much more serious things

[3:03:48] Voice 6: to be spoken about with the trust council

[3:03:50] Voice 6: So it would be a shame to see this being, you know,

[3:03:54] Voice 6: drug out to a painful degree and wasting precious time.

[3:04:00] Voice 6: Thanks.

[3:04:00] Trustee Bernardo: Thank you.

[3:04:01] Trustee Bernardo: Well, we're kind of dragging it out here

[3:04:02] Trustee Bernardo: and we do have other business to conduct

[3:04:04] Trustee Bernardo: and Trustee Ellard, it's going to be the last comment

[3:04:06] Trustee Bernardo: I'm going to entertain on this motion.

[3:04:09] Trustee Elliott: I just would like to put forward

[3:04:11] Trustee Elliott: the recommended staff resolution

[3:04:15] Trustee Elliott: at the bottom of page 41,

[3:04:17] Trustee Elliott: one after we have a vote on this motion.

[3:04:22] Trustee Elliott: Staff did recommend-

[3:04:23] Trustee Elliott: All right,

[3:04:23] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Elliott,

[3:04:25] Trustee Bernardo: I'm gonna give you an opportunity to make that point

[3:04:27] Trustee Bernardo: after we've had the vote on this.

[3:04:28] Trustee Bernardo: All right, I'm gonna go to you first after that.

[3:04:31] Trustee Bernardo: All right, people, the motion's on the floor.

[3:04:35] Trustee Bernardo: Hang on, before I jump into that,

[3:04:37] Trustee Bernardo: I see Director Mobs and she's one of those people

[3:04:41] Trustee Bernardo: I'm prepared to listen to.

[3:04:42] Trustee Bernardo: What's up?

[3:04:44] Voice 2: So we have clarified which meetings

[3:04:46] Voice 2: we're talking about here.

[3:04:47] Voice 2: I think it would make sense to also make that clear

[3:04:49] Voice 2: in the resolution itself.

[3:04:51] Voice 2: Currently it reads that all calendar 24 and 25 meetings

[3:04:53] Voice 2: will be electronic.

[3:04:54] Voice 2: I think it should be 2024 dash 2025 meetings,

[3:04:57] Voice 2: which refers to next fiscal year.

[3:05:02] Voice 2: Is that, that's my understanding, correct?

[3:05:05] Voice 2: Great, I see thumbs up.

[3:05:06] Trustee Bernardo: I'm that, does anybody object to that amendment?

[3:05:13] Trustee Bernardo: Then that amendment is made.

[3:05:16] Trustee Bernardo: All right, we're putting motion up for a vote.

[3:05:18] Trustee Bernardo: All of those in favor

[3:05:20] Voice 8: of this motion,

[3:05:20] Voice 8: please raise your hands.

[3:05:31] Voice 8: You're not a lonely place Trustee Graham,

[3:05:33] Voice 8: but I'm familiar with it myself.

[3:05:36] Voice 8: Please lower your hands.

[3:05:37] Voice 8: Those who are opposed, please raise your hands.

[3:05:43] Voice 8: The motion is defeated.

[3:05:46] Voice 8: All right.

[3:05:48] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Elliot, you had an alternative.

[3:05:50] Trustee Bernardo: You wanted the committee to entertain.

[3:05:52] Voice 13: Thank you, Chair.

[3:05:54] Voice 9: Sorry to interrupt.

[3:05:55] Voice 9: I had put off putting my motion on

[3:05:58] Voice 9: till this motion was put through.

[3:06:00] Voice 9: and I come back to my motion

[3:06:02] Voice 9: before we get to Trustee Elliot's motion.

[3:06:08] Voice 8: Doesn't make a difference which one goes first,

[3:06:14] Voice 8: but Trustee Evans.

[3:06:20] Voice 8: I move that

[3:06:22] Voice 9: financial planning committee

[3:06:25] Voice 9: requests trust council to consider options

[3:06:31] Voice 9: to reduce

[3:06:31] Voice 10: costs related to in-person trust council meetings

[3:06:37] Voice 10: meetings such

[3:06:40] Voice 8: as a cap on catering i will second that motion okay let me just read that that

[3:07:02] Voice 9: doesn't quite look right that i move that financial planning committee request

[3:07:09] Voice 10: trust council

[3:07:11] Voice 8: to consider options to reduce costs related to in-person trust council meetings comma such as

[3:07:27] Voice 8: as a California catering or semi-colon, whatever.

[3:07:30] Voice 8: Thank you.

[3:07:32] Voice 8: Trustee Yates, you're seconding that motion?

[3:07:35] Voice 3: Yes, but I think it needs a little correction.

[3:07:39] Voice 3: I don't think it's trust council.

[3:07:41] Voice 3: I think it's to request staff to actually look at the costs.

[3:07:49] Voice 9: Okay, yes, you're correct.

[3:07:51] Voice 9: So we can request staff to consider options

[3:07:53] Voice 9: and bring it to trust council meeting

[3:07:55] Voice 9: for trust council to discuss.

[3:08:00] Voice 8: Thank you.

[3:08:08] Voice 8: to discuss reduction in costs.

[3:08:12] Voice 8: Bring it back to us.

[3:08:19] Voice 8: Thank you.

[3:08:20] Voice 8: I think it should be reading to bring them,

[3:08:29] Voice 8: not bring it, to trust council.

[3:08:33] Voice 8: Thank you.

[3:08:37] Voice 8: Is that your motion, Trustee Evans,

[3:08:41] Trustee Bernardo: and that's what you're seconding, Trustee Yates?

[3:08:46] Voice 3: Yes, although I'm not sure if they should be brought back

[3:08:49] Voice 3: to the financial planning committee and then to council,

[3:08:52] Voice 3: Council but I'll leave that up to you to decide well

[3:08:57] Trustee Bernardo: the motion is whatever you guys want it to be

[3:08:59] Trustee Bernardo: yeah

[3:09:00] Voice 8: so that's the motion that's on the floor okay trustee

[3:09:08] Trustee Bernardo: Elliott you were pipped at the

[3:09:10] Trustee Bernardo: finish line so uh we're gonna have to deal with this before we get to your thing I

[3:09:13] Trustee Elliott: would like to

[3:09:14] Trustee Elliott: speak to the motion um and so my suggestion was that this briefing be attached to the meeting

[3:09:23] Trustee Elliott: Scheduling RFD Heading to Trust Council in December. That is a staff recommendation on page 41. The discussion needs to be had at Trust Council about scheduling our meeting dates. So I don't think there's an opportunity to bring it back to Financial Planning Committee for consideration than to Trust Council.

[3:09:40] Trustee Elliott: council those decisions need to be made at december's trust council so we can tell the public

[3:09:44] Trustee Elliott: where we're meeting and when so it's a meeting schedule rfd and this briefing can be attached

[3:09:52] Trustee Elliott: to it and then we have the discussion about reducing costs such as a cap on catering that

[3:09:58] Trustee Elliott: we just need to have this briefing because it does have the cost breakdown and analysis which

[3:10:04] Trustee Elliott: which I had asked for at last FPC,

[3:10:06] Trustee Elliott: so that trust council can have this discussion

[3:10:09] Trustee Elliott: with analysis.

[3:10:12] Trustee Bernardo: All right.

[3:10:13] Trustee Bernardo: So it seems like a constructive suggestion,

[3:10:16] Trustee Bernardo: but we'll see whether the group wants to proceed

[3:10:18] Trustee Bernardo: with the trustee Graham.

[3:10:21] Voice 4: Yeah, thank you chair.

[3:10:22] Voice 4: I'm actually speaking against the motion specifically

[3:10:24] Voice 4: because I think it implies that staff aren't using

[3:10:27] Voice 4: a sharp pencil when they make the decisions

[3:10:30] Voice 4: as to who they hire.

[3:10:31] Voice 4: I believe staff is very aware of the costs

[3:10:34] Voice 4: and are doing their very best to provide certainly not gold standard food and accommodation

[3:10:40] Voice 4: for us, but

[3:10:42] Voice 8: adequate. Thank you.

[3:10:48] Voice 8: Yeah, sorry, muted.

[3:10:55] Trustee Luckham: I'm going to sound like I'm contrary, which I'm not really, but I'm opposed.

[3:11:04] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, I'm opposed to this simply because I'll draw an example. We just had our

[3:11:10] Trustee Luckham: council meeting on North Pender Island. We had to bring a caterer in from Victoria to cater the

[3:11:16] Trustee Luckham: meals there because there was nobody available on Pender that could do it or wanted to do it or

[3:11:23] Trustee Luckham: otherwise. I don't know the circumstances because staff look after that. And if we're staying at a

[3:11:29] Trustee Luckham: facility, a hotel that has a restaurant, there's no doubt that that's the best value for money as

[3:11:35] Trustee Luckham: a package. We're not frivolous. We're not drinking champagne and eating caviar. In fact,

[3:11:42] Trustee Luckham: quite often, we do eat sandwiches. Outside of us all bringing our own lunches, I'm not sure

[3:11:49] Trustee Luckham: where you can save money because it just simply costs money to cater. I want to follow Trustee

[3:12:00] Trustee Luckham: Harris here. We should be focusing on the things that we can do that are going to make a difference

[3:12:04] Trustee Luckham: to the preserve and protect mandate and the work of the island's trust than a race to the financial

[3:12:09] Trustee Luckham: bottom of the pile thank

[3:12:13] Trustee Bernardo: you all right um we are um using up a tremendous amount of time

[3:12:19] Trustee Bernardo: on i'll be honest a marginal point uh i'm not going to entertain any more comments about this

[3:12:24] Trustee Bernardo: i'm going to put this motion up to um up to a vote i

[3:12:29] Voice 13: don't know if you saw this cao has his

[3:12:30] Voice 13: hand up it's kind of invisible uh

[3:12:33] Voice 8: that's okay like uh you know

[3:12:38] Voice 18: let's

[3:12:40] Voice 8: just have the vote

[3:12:41] Voice 8: we don't we you know we've got to move on so those in favor of this motion please raise your hands

[3:12:58] Voice 8: trustee yates trustees and trustee evans i'm

[3:13:03] Voice 9: okay i was just bringing this forward as an option

[3:13:06] Voice 9: okay it's not supported it's not supported yeah

[3:13:09] Voice 8: me too okay those who are opposed uh please raise

[3:13:13] Voice 8: your hands motions defeated now trustee elliott let's get to you you

[3:13:22] Trustee Bernardo: make a point before you want

[3:13:24] Trustee Bernardo: the recommendation of staff to be adopted let's put that up on the screen

[3:13:27] Trustee Elliott: 41 at the very bottom

[3:13:29] Trustee Elliott: it may have been missed um there's a staff recommendation that this briefing be attached

[3:13:34] Trustee Elliott: to the meeting scheduling RFD heading to Trust Council in December to support discussion

[3:13:40] Trustee Elliott: at this time.

[3:13:47] Voice 8: And the effect of that would be to bring

[3:13:51] Trustee Bernardo: the issue to the floor for the Trust

[3:13:53] Trustee Bernardo: Council to have the kind of discussion we've had, but except it's the decision-making body.

[3:13:59] Trustee Bernardo: Is that the point?

[3:14:00] Trustee Elliott: Well, we have to set the meeting schedules and whether they're going

[3:14:07] Trustee Elliott: going to be in-person or electronic. And to support that decision by Trust Council, it's good

[3:14:13] Trustee Elliott: to have the financial analysis, which is why I asked for what are the actual costs of the last

[3:14:20] Trustee Elliott: four meetings live in-person, small islands relative to city centres. So now we have the

[3:14:27] Trustee Elliott: information. It's in this briefing. I'm just asking that it be appended to the meeting scheduling RFD

[3:14:36] Trustee Elliott: that we have to decide at trust council so okay

[3:14:38] Trustee Bernardo: can you frame that in in terms of a motion please

[3:14:41] Trustee Bernardo: the

[3:14:42] Trustee Elliott: resolution staff suggest rfp fpc request that this briefing be attached to the meeting

[3:14:50] Trustee Elliott: scheduling rfd heading to trust council in december to support discussion at that time

[3:14:55] Trustee Elliott: do

[3:14:56] Trustee Bernardo: we have a seconder for this second

[3:14:57] Trustee Elliott: that motion trustee

[3:14:59] Trustee Bernardo: yates seconds the motion the motion's on

[3:15:02] Trustee Bernardo: the floor um i say trustee

[3:15:06] Voice 8: bowen you have your hand up um do you have a comment no hand is down

[3:15:13] Voice 8: uh

[3:15:14] Trustee Bernardo: it's pretty straightforward request we spend a lot of time on this topic i'm gonna put the i'm

[3:15:18] Trustee Bernardo: gonna put this motion up for a vote and to repeat the motion is that the briefing be attached okay

[3:15:27] Trustee Bernardo: here it's going out right it's up there trustee elliott spoken has spoken the magic words so i'm

[3:15:36] Trustee Bernardo: I'm going to put this up for a vote.

[3:15:37] Trustee Bernardo: All

[3:15:37] Voice 8: those in favor of this motion,

[3:15:39] Voice 8: please raise your hands.

[3:15:44] Voice 8: All right, and please lower your hands.

[3:15:46] Voice 8: And those of you who are opposed to the motion,

[3:15:48] Voice 8: please raise your hands.

[3:15:51] Voice 8: I see one.

[3:15:53] Voice 8: All right, the motion passes.

[3:15:57] Voice 8: All right, I think we

[3:16:00] Trustee Bernardo: have concluded this discussion

[3:16:02] Trustee Bernardo: on trust council meeting expenses.

[3:16:04] Trustee Bernardo: And now we get to,

[3:16:06] Trustee Bernardo: we have a little over an hour and a half,

[3:16:09] Trustee Bernardo: an hour and 45 minutes to discuss

[3:16:10] Trustee Bernardo: the real guts of this meeting,

[3:16:12] Trustee Bernardo: which is getting into the discussion of the draft budget.

[3:16:20] Trustee Bernardo: And there are some points that I think need

[3:16:23] Trustee Bernardo: to be addressed here, which are on the agenda.

[3:16:27] Trustee Bernardo: They're all interrelated.

[3:16:29] Trustee Bernardo: So I don't propose that we go through them item by item.

[3:16:34] Trustee Bernardo: Rather these, I consider these to be the prominent points

[3:16:38] Trustee Bernardo: that should, that we as a body should be addressing

[3:16:41] Trustee Bernardo: in this discussion of the budget.

[3:16:43] Trustee Bernardo: Those points are a reasonability of spending levels,

[3:16:46] Trustee Bernardo: reasonability of projected tax increase as it looks now,

[3:16:50] Trustee Bernardo: and completeness of business case data.

[3:16:55] Voice 8: So that discussion intersects

[3:17:00] Trustee Bernardo: with the substance of 7.5,

[3:17:05] Trustee Bernardo: which is all the stuff we're being asked to

[3:17:09] Voice 8: forward

[3:17:10] Voice 8: and to trust council for its information and review so i consider 7.4.4 to really be the

[3:17:22] Voice 8: heart of today's discussion the real substance of it so

[3:17:26] Voice 8: i'm opening the floor to that discussion

[3:17:30] Voice 8: are our spending levels reasonable is

[3:17:33] Trustee Bernardo: the projected tax increase reasonable are the

[3:17:36] Trustee Bernardo: business cases that we're looking at

[3:17:38] Voice 8: sufficient and adequate for the requests that they're making

[3:17:43] Voice 8: who wishes to speak to this fundamental issue i don't see a lot of hands trustee patrick

[3:18:00] Voice 8: ah heck i'll start um the cost of living on our islands is

[3:18:10] Trustee Patrick: you know we just talked about the cost

[3:18:11] Trustee Patrick: of putting on a trust consult meeting and the costs have risen dramatically and aren't the same

[3:18:15] Trustee Patrick: as they were 30 years ago well they're not the same as they were three months ago everything is

[3:18:20] Trustee Patrick: just crazy on our islands i know here on salt spring we have the crd is also in double digits

[3:18:27] Trustee Patrick: for its increase for taxes next year.

[3:18:29] Trustee Patrick: So it's not just what our impact is

[3:18:31] Trustee Patrick: on our residents of the island.

[3:18:34] Trustee Patrick: It's the collective impact of the governance structure

[3:18:38] Trustee Patrick: and the governing bodies

[3:18:39] Trustee Patrick: that are going to be affecting them.

[3:18:46] Trustee Patrick: I'll repeat, as I said earlier,

[3:18:47] Trustee Patrick: I am a huge proponent of the corporate planning

[3:18:50] Trustee Patrick: and strategic planning focus.

[3:18:52] Trustee Patrick: I'm still uncomfortable

[3:18:54] Trustee Patrick: that we really don't have a strong strategic plan.

[3:18:56] Trustee Patrick: um housing is clearly a strong initiative of mine um i think you should be aware that there is a

[3:19:04] Trustee Patrick: new uh housing amendments are making their way through perhaps they had second reading as of

[3:19:09] Trustee Patrick: i guess they're probably in chambers right now so it's this afternoon that should be a second

[3:19:13] Trustee Patrick: reading on the um housing amendments for the most part were excluded with the exception of

[3:19:20] Trustee Patrick: of housing needs assessments, which is $110,000 item in our budget for this year. The section

[3:19:28] Trustee Patrick: that requires that we update the housing needs assessments as currently proposed is being

[3:19:36] Trustee Patrick: repealed. It's being replaced by a section that says the housing needs reports must be done on

[3:19:43] Trustee Patrick: or before December 31st, 2028. There will be a whole section of regulations and things coming.

[3:19:50] Trustee Patrick: So the Regional Planning Committee will be talking about these pending changes at its meeting next Wednesday.

[3:19:58] Trustee Patrick: I suggest we either redline or circle the $110,000 that's in this item,

[3:20:06] Trustee Patrick: because we will have to consider these new legislative requirements that do affect us in regard to the housing needs assessments

[3:20:13] Trustee Patrick: and the update of our OCPs to account for that zoning

[3:20:18] Trustee Patrick: and perhaps come up with a more robust multi-year plan

[3:20:22] Trustee Patrick: to

[3:20:23] Voice 8: achieve these new requirements.

[3:20:30] Voice 8: Trustee Peterson.

[3:20:34] Voice 5: Thank you, Chair.

[3:20:35] Voice 5: And thank you for that Trustee Patrick, I agree.

[3:20:42] Voice 5: The housing needs assessments in particular

[3:20:47] Voice 5: is an area that we did ask staff at our previous meeting.

[3:20:51] Voice 5: It's one of the areas that we asked staff to look into approaching the province for funding.

[3:20:58] Voice 5: I think that before we put the whole amount in this budget, that it's worthy of that exploration happening.

[3:21:09] Voice 5: Because the province is mandating that this happen, I think it's an absolutely appropriate specific request for the province to come up with some funding.

[3:21:20] Voice 5: and uh i'll just leave it at that um but i wholly agree on this point let's not rush into budgeting

[3:21:29] Voice 5: and oh i know the other point i was going to make is that um when it comes to uh asking the

[3:21:33] Voice 5: province for funding if we've if we're already undertaking these housing assessments we're

[3:21:37] Voice 5: already budgeting it budgeting it for us um the province is much less likely to pony up some

[3:21:45] Voice 5: dollars after we've begun the process.

[3:21:51] Voice 8: That was

[3:21:54] Voice 9: exactly what I was going to raise, but I do have one other item under the strategic

[3:21:59] Voice 9: plan projects.

[3:22:01] Voice 9: I'm still not seeing the corporate planning process as a strategic project being listed

[3:22:07] Voice 9: there.

[3:22:08] Voice 9: I know that our CAO had identified about 450 hours of staff time being required to do the

[3:22:17] Voice 9: work.

[3:22:17] Voice 9: it doesn't look like there'll be any physical outgoing monies but we should still have that

[3:22:25] Voice 9: listed and identified as a strategic planned project along with however much the staff is

[3:22:36] Voice 9: going to cost us because it's still at the end of the day monies and hours required for a

[3:22:41] Voice 9: an agreed to plan project that that's not being identified uh

[3:22:49] Trustee Bernardo: director mobs can you explain why

[3:22:51] Trustee Bernardo: that my recollection it may be faulty but my recollection is that the trust council

[3:22:57] Trustee Bernardo: had voted to make corporate planning um the corporate planning project a priority and a

[3:23:04] Trustee Bernardo: strategic priority um why is uh can you explain why that's not reflected in the budget

[3:23:14] Voice 2: I think our CAO is probably a better place to respond to that question.

[3:23:17] Voice 2: I see he's turned his mic off, so he probably thinks so too.

[3:23:21] Voice 19: Well, I would actually answer that in combination with Julia, and I'll quote her, I think.

[3:23:26] Voice 19: And that is what you see when you see these budget requests are new funding for the coming year.

[3:23:32] Voice 19: They're fiscal decisions.

[3:23:34] Voice 19: Certainly the corporate planning process is beginning to wrap its arms around how do we identify staff resourcing that way, but we haven't fully adopted that.

[3:23:47] Voice 19: There's many projects that we'd be undertaking that are staff heavy, that aren't reflected in the budget decision that's coming up for you right now.

[3:23:59] Voice 19: we we hope and think that the corporate planning process in the future through departmental

[3:24:04] Voice 19: budgeting and so forth would be able to delineate those better right now i have this as an as a

[3:24:11] Voice 19: internal work and as such a business case with the financial decision element associated with

[3:24:17] Voice 19: it isn't included if that's where we want to go now there's probably a lot more business cases

[3:24:24] Voice 19: that you'd need to see but maybe julia can provide some uh um either confirm what i'm saying or

[3:24:31] Voice 19: provide some greater insight director mobs uh

[3:24:35] Voice 2: sure so in support of the ceo essentially um very

[3:24:38] Voice 2: similar comments the budget is consolidated based on requests that come to us from all places within

[3:24:43] Voice 2: the organization so that includes the political bodies including governance committee who is

[3:24:49] Voice 2: overseeing this project and also departments internally within the organization so there has

[3:24:56] Voice 2: been no requests that have come forward to fund the ongoing work of the corporate plan

[3:25:00] Voice 2: my understanding is you know using consultants for various portions of the corporate plan

[3:25:06] Voice 2: would require dollars the plan right now as the CAO says is leaning on staff and so there is no

[3:25:12] Voice 2: additional dollars for that certainly if there's a shift in how we want to roll out corporate

[3:25:16] Voice 2: planning that would require external dollars, we could add that in at some point later in the

[3:25:20] Voice 2: budget cycle.

[3:25:23] Voice 8: Thank you. Tracey Bowen?

[3:25:29] Voice 10: Yeah, I've really thought

[3:25:30] Voice 11: about this a lot. I mean, last year

[3:25:32] Voice 11: I made an attempt at reducing the budget by going, okay, we should all reduce elements of

[3:25:43] Voice 11: the budget by some amount. That wasn't a great success. So I've been thinking about it a lot

[3:25:50] Voice 11: differently and i have a few suggestions number one i do think that the corporate planning project

[3:25:56] Voice 11: should be here in the future when the corporate planning is mature then all

[3:26:05] Voice 11: activities will come to be reviewed and prioritized not just those requiring funding

[3:26:12] Voice 11: which is what we see right now so we see we get a very partial view of the activities

[3:26:18] Voice 11: opportunities um for just one number that came to my attention was the fact that over two years

[3:26:26] Voice 11: our staff salary budget has gone up by i think 1.5 million and over one year 500 000 there are

[3:26:33] Voice 11: reasons for that cost of living increases etc etc then i read you know the business cases where

[3:26:39] Voice 11: every single business case has a huge element of a discussion about the risk of not having staff

[3:26:47] Voice 11: staff available. I look at the list of vacancies that we have and I put all of those together and

[3:26:55] Voice 11: I think that it's not about the money, it's also about the resources. We have to look at the

[3:27:00] Voice 11: resources, we have to look at staff overload and stress and we have to be realistic and we have to

[3:27:06] Voice 11: pick out the things that mean something. For instance, maybe finishing the trust policy

[3:27:12] Voice 11: statement is more important than pretty much anything else. Let's just get that over the line.

[3:27:17] Voice 11: It's an embarrassment to consider that it could be pushed out to, I don't know, 25, 26, whatever.

[3:27:24] Voice 11: We have to consider implementing, you know, more of the governance review recommendations.

[3:27:32] Voice 11: We're not making really fast progress on that.

[3:27:36] Voice 11: And it's partly because the turnaround time on everything is quite slow.

[3:27:41] Voice 11: low um and as as christina said corporate planning should have a business case uh in front of

[3:27:50] Voice 11: everybody here because it is a significant staff um component and and there are timelines that have

[3:27:58] Voice 11: to be adhered to if we are actually to make any attempt at having it implemented it can't be

[3:28:05] Voice 11: pushed out it has to be done within fixed times and so I look at it and I have a couple of things

[3:28:12] Voice 11: first of all there's no business case for the Islands Trust Conservancy staff position

[3:28:19] Voice 11: and as far as I know Director Freyter has indicated that she is completely overloaded

[3:28:27] Voice 11: and unable to prepare that and in fact for in a timely fashion and she is and that was before the

[3:28:36] Voice 11: recent resignation of the intergovernmental senior policy advisor so I would recommend removing that

[3:28:44] Voice 11: for sure and I also have a recommendation that we should go through and I have a motion that I would

[3:28:54] Voice 11: put at the end of this discussion which is that trust council should be asked to look at progress

[3:29:01] Voice 11: on last year's plans and possibly the root cause for the lack of progress on many

[3:29:08] Voice 11: the rate of vacancies and staff turnover they should look at all of the resource courses

[3:29:16] Voice 11: costs of all of the activities and that they should contemplate prioritizing

[3:29:24] Voice 11: and you know removing certain activities just counseling them deferring them postponing them

[3:29:31] Voice 11: entirely to reduce stress and staff overload anyway that's my point thank

[3:29:39] Voice 8: you thank you

[3:29:39] Voice 8: thank you patrick well thanks thanks may read um there's

[3:29:47] Trustee Patrick: also another fundamental thing that

[3:29:51] Trustee Patrick: we should consider is we we tend to always try to do things in-house i know we think sometimes

[3:29:56] Trustee Patrick: that's the most cost-effective.

[3:30:00] Trustee Patrick: way to go about things but I look at like the GIS system we were very fortunate to have a staff

[3:30:04] Trustee Patrick: person who was extremely talented in you know cobbling that thing together over these years and

[3:30:09] Trustee Patrick: and and is a resource that is quite unique and powerful compared to what's available in some of

[3:30:18] Trustee Patrick: the our our fellow municipalities and in the area are there other ways of doing that should we be

[3:30:26] Trustee Patrick: partnering with the university rather than you know to have there's there's partner systems with

[3:30:30] Trustee Patrick: with both UVic and UVC on GIS systems and support?

[3:30:36] Trustee Patrick: Is ours more associated with a university setting?

[3:30:43] Trustee Patrick: And so are there cost effectiveness

[3:30:45] Trustee Patrick: instead of gearing up more staff to support that?

[3:30:48] Trustee Patrick: Should we be looking at those types of partners

[3:30:50] Trustee Patrick: so that we're not so dependent if we lose a staff person,

[3:30:53] Trustee Patrick: we lose a whole system?

[3:30:55] Trustee Patrick: And I think those are things that we should look at

[3:30:57] Trustee Patrick: as really taking advantage of the partners

[3:31:00] Trustee Patrick: that we could have fit well with us.

[3:31:06] Voice 8: Thank you.

[3:31:07] Voice 8: Before we turn to Trustee Harris,

[3:31:11] Voice 8: I

[3:31:12] Trustee Bernardo: have some comments of my own to make here

[3:31:14] Trustee Bernardo: that are in keeping with the general drift of the discussion.

[3:31:18] Trustee Bernardo: And I'm going to make them with a view

[3:31:21] Trustee Bernardo: to perhaps helping the discussion

[3:31:24] Trustee Bernardo: by taking the view from 30,000 feet.

[3:31:29] Trustee Bernardo: In terms of determining whether or not a budget

[3:31:32] Trustee Bernardo: budget or this budget makes sense, we have to look at the reasonability of the spending levels,

[3:31:38] Trustee Bernardo: the reasonability of projected tax increase. That raises a question, how do we determine

[3:31:44] Trustee Bernardo: what's reasonable? Well, it depends on the data we have, which is the completeness of business

[3:31:51] Trustee Bernardo: case data is essential for this committee to make any determinations about reasonability.

[3:31:58] Trustee Bernardo: So my own view about this is that pending corporate planning, we need to respect our existing process.

[3:32:07] Trustee Bernardo: And our existing process is that when funding requests are made, they are with business cases.

[3:32:13] Trustee Bernardo: Making substantial funding requests without business cases isn't our process.

[3:32:20] Trustee Bernardo: And we can't expect our process to work very efficiently if we don't respect its elements.

[3:32:26] Trustee Bernardo: so uh we do have business cases we have some funding requests for which there really aren't

[3:32:33] Trustee Bernardo: any business cases and then we do have a lot of this panoply of business cases that are attached

[3:32:39] Trustee Bernardo: and i've reviewed them i didn't have a chance to review them before the last meeting because

[3:32:44] Trustee Bernardo: i wasn't able to get

[3:32:45] Voice 8: there but um i confess uh the two business cases that uh information systems

[3:32:56] Trustee Bernardo: systems put forward appear to meet the standard of our policy.

[3:33:02] Trustee Bernardo: They're pretty comprehensive, the detail they provide us with the data.

[3:33:06] Trustee Bernardo: I'm sorry to say this, the rest of the business cases don't do that.

[3:33:09] Trustee Bernardo: They just don't provide enough information for a reader to draw,

[3:33:15] Trustee Bernardo: to make an assessment as to whether or not the request

[3:33:21] Trustee Bernardo: is reasonable or even

[3:33:22] Voice 8: sometimes even to understand the request.

[3:33:25] Voice 8: question so um the

[3:33:30] Trustee Bernardo: concern that we have of making sure that we're fiscally responsible

[3:33:34] Trustee Bernardo: we need the right information for that i'm all for fiscal discipline and and cutting things

[3:33:43] Trustee Bernardo: on the cost benefit analysis if they don't if we don't really think they're worth much

[3:33:47] Trustee Bernardo: in terms of delivering on the mandate but it's actually hard to make that assessment on the

[3:33:54] Trustee Bernardo: the basis of most of those business cases that's my concern which is i i personally would like to

[3:33:59] Trustee Bernardo: see most of those business cases returned to the originating bodies and and that we ask for

[3:34:03] Trustee Bernardo: far greater detail because i don't think

[3:34:07] Voice 8: it's sufficient that's my view of it in any case

[3:34:09] Voice 8: trustee harris thank you i'm i'm at risk of going

[3:34:20] Voice 6: on and on here um so i'll try and

[3:34:23] Voice 6: And where there isn't a business case, clearly, it should not be.

[3:34:32] Voice 6: It's pretty simple, in my view.

[3:34:35] Voice 6: I do, you know, when I look back at the governance review, and I see, I understand why that review came in as it did.

[3:34:45] Voice 6: And some people interpreted it as they did.

[3:34:49] Voice 6: and um you know salt spring island for instance um we've been told here for 20 years that we

[3:35:00] Voice 6: needed to do something about housing so at this point this whole housing needs assessment i think

[3:35:04] Voice 6: it's already been assessed so i i'm i struggle with that um to keep um my blood pressure down

[3:35:11] Voice 6: when speaking about it

[3:35:13] Voice 8: but um you know i'm just i think i'll leave it at that for

[3:35:22] Voice 6: now thank you

[3:35:23] Voice 6: maybe let me add let me add one more thing so when I see the the policy statement amendment

[3:35:31] Voice 6: project and then I think back to our trust council where we've just we've defined the

[3:35:35] Voice 6: section three of the mandate and went into quite detail about that it was very involved with all

[3:35:42] Voice 6: the trustees and I look at the fact that there were there was reviews from previous years

[3:35:50] Voice 6: you know leaning completely in the direction that we and the conclusion that we came to the trust

[3:35:57] Voice 6: council meeting and i see what has gone on over the years i.e the policy statement and how damn

[3:36:02] Voice 6: and how how um alarming that was to so many people meanwhile we had known about the what the

[3:36:10] Voice 6: unique amenities um could possibly mean and yet that was just somehow ignored so how much money

[3:36:15] Voice 6: was spent there and why all of a sudden are we so i'm glad that we're talking about this stuff now

[3:36:19] Voice 6: the um and and not to mention the cdf and we can go on about that and what the delegation

[3:36:25] Voice 6: and the information that

[3:36:26] Voice 8: came through we won't we

[3:36:28] Voice 6: won't but all that comes into money that was

[3:36:31] Voice 6: spent and so we don't want to do that anymore i guess is what i'm getting at the point i want to

[3:36:37] Voice 6: get to and somewhere there has to be some accountability for what has gone on and if it

[3:36:44] Voice 6: starts with an end to ill-spent taxpayers dollars then i'm all for cutting as much as we possibly

[3:36:54] Voice 6: can here i'll leave it at that thank you uh

[3:36:56] Trustee Bernardo: just as a technical point or not a technical point but

[3:36:59] Trustee Bernardo: a material point here with respect to the housing needs assessment um we need to undertake that as

[3:37:05] Trustee Bernardo: according to what my reading in the materials we need to undertake that in order to satisfy

[3:37:09] Trustee Bernardo: by statutory requirements, that doesn't eliminate the need for a fuller, in my view,

[3:37:16] Trustee Bernardo: fuller business case, because it's a question of how can we cost-effectively provide that

[3:37:25] Trustee Bernardo: statutory assessment. The fact that the housing needs assessment is a statutory requirement

[3:37:32] Trustee Bernardo: doesn't mean that's a ticket to rubber stamping whatever's in front of us. It just means we're

[3:37:37] Trustee Bernardo: going to have to come up with some method of doing that but we have to satisfy ourselves the business

[3:37:44] Trustee Bernardo: case that has been presented is adequate to the task and and fiscally responsible um but there's

[3:37:51] Trustee Bernardo: no escaping i think the fact that we have to do the needs assessment um

[3:37:55] Voice 8: trustee boland

[3:37:58] Voice 10: yeah just

[3:37:59] Voice 11: just a point to the needs assessment um laura's point is that it's changing uh you know the

[3:38:06] Voice 11: The legislation may change, the requirements may change.

[3:38:09] Voice 11: And I think Tim's point was that if we go to the province and we are entitled to one-off payment for that,

[3:38:16] Voice 11: which we didn't get the first go round because we did our assessments prior to the funding being available.

[3:38:23] Voice 11: So everybody else got one round of funding we missed out.

[3:38:27] Voice 11: The second thing is with respect to business case, to be fair, that they have a consultant's report on how to do it.

[3:38:36] Voice 11: and what's required so there's quite a comprehensive description of of it with a

[3:38:43] Voice 11: range of costs so i'm not sure to be honest i'm not sure if it's included in this business case

[3:38:50] Voice 11: explicitly but but quite a bit of work was done on on what what was involved in that case thanks

[3:38:58] Trustee Bernardo: well if that material was included i missed it and that's on me but i don't recall seeing that

[3:39:03] Trustee Bernardo: but that's actually the level of detail that would have been very

[3:39:07] Voice 8: helpful if it was incorporated in

[3:39:09] Voice 8: the business case trustee Patrick

[3:39:14] Trustee Patrick: yeah just in regard to the housing needs assessment there is

[3:39:17] Trustee Patrick: new regulations coming that will dictate the methodologies that's that's what's coming from the

[3:39:23] Trustee Patrick: all this new changes that we're seeing from the province so that's why I said red circle it and

[3:39:29] Trustee Patrick: and it's going to change. It has to. I agree with you, Chair Bernardo. I mean,

[3:39:38] Trustee Patrick: what are we looking at? I mean, we're looking at business cases that have been done in this format

[3:39:42] Trustee Patrick: for a long time. And then once a business case and budget is done, then there's a project charter.

[3:39:48] Trustee Patrick: Again, it's another sort of vague document. On page 163 under the Salt Spring one, we've added,

[3:39:55] Trustee Patrick: because we couldn't ask for it at the time of a business case, but we put in there that we want

[3:39:59] Trustee Patrick: want to see a work plan. And I don't know if we, I think we've got different levels of information

[3:40:03] Trustee Patrick: that we're asking for, but we wanted to see a work plan that did identify where, what was the

[3:40:09] Trustee Patrick: professional expertise required, the project timelines, the estimated costs, the activities,

[3:40:13] Trustee Patrick: the interagency cooperation, key milestones, decision points, and deliverables. It's, you know,

[3:40:19] Trustee Patrick: we have tools that aren't quite working. And I think that's one of the things the corporate

[3:40:23] Trustee Patrick: planning process is going to get into and get us those tools. So we're still sort of stuck with our

[3:40:28] Trustee Patrick: old way of doing it.

[3:40:31] Trustee Bernardo: I appreciate your point, Tracy Patrick. It's just that I'm not sure

[3:40:34] Trustee Bernardo: the old way of doing it was, for the most part, faithful to the underlying policy

[3:40:41] Trustee Bernardo: that establishes the need for business cases. You can follow the template and

[3:40:49] Trustee Bernardo: be skimpy with the information. And it's not that helpful. It's not really a business case.

[3:40:57] Trustee Bernardo: It's simply filing a form that looks like a business case, but doesn't have the substance.

[3:41:02] Trustee Bernardo: So let's not kid ourselves.

[3:41:03] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, there's a policy there.

[3:41:07] Trustee Bernardo: And like I said, if you look at what we got out of the information systems people, that's

[3:41:12] Trustee Bernardo: really thorough.

[3:41:13] Trustee Bernardo: That's helpful.

[3:41:14] Trustee Bernardo: It explains why the expenditure is necessary and provides a really useful context for the

[3:41:20] Trustee Bernardo: operational needs for it.

[3:41:21] Trustee Bernardo: and that dovetails obviously into how we manage our work to undertake the mandate I can't say

[3:41:32] Trustee Bernardo: the same about the rest of the business cases some of them you know they jump out and different

[3:41:39] Trustee Bernardo: people have different opinions but some of them certainly jump out to me it's kind of obviously

[3:41:42] Trustee Bernardo: necessary but that's just based on my own temperament and inclinations and the things

[3:41:48] Trustee Bernardo: i think are important i i haven't seen the analysis that would help an objective reader

[3:41:54] Trustee Bernardo: draw the same conclusion that's why i'm leaning towards the idea of asking everybody other than

[3:42:02] Trustee Bernardo: information systems to redo their business cases in greater detail and to use the dreaded word

[3:42:08] Trustee Bernardo: more fulsome uh satisfaction of what's in the what's in the

[3:42:12] Voice 8: um of the policy do we have any

[3:42:15] Voice 8: further comments here trusty elliott um i guess

[3:42:27] Trustee Elliott: i will speak to the lack of a business case for the

[3:42:29] Trustee Elliott: itc um concern sorry are we into the business cases yet or we're sort of at the 30 000 foot

[3:42:38] Trustee Elliott: overview uh

[3:42:39] Trustee Bernardo: we're at the 30 000 foot overview at this moment we can get into the business cases

[3:42:43] Trustee Bernardo: once we get into the draft budget overview uh and we should do that very soon okay

[3:42:49] Voice 13: i'll hold my

[3:42:50] Voice 13: comments.

[3:42:50] Trustee Bernardo: All right. I think we've discussed the essentials here. Let's move on to the review,

[3:42:56] Voice 8: please. Director Mox.

[3:43:02] Voice 2: Certainly, Chair. So this is agenda item 7.5.1. This is the briefing that

[3:43:08] Voice 2: will head to Trust Council for their budget session in December. So this document looks

[3:43:17] Voice 2: very similar to the document that Financial Planning Committee reviewed at their meeting

[3:43:21] Voice 2: in October. Of course, there's been some changes to numbers. And so those changes have been

[3:43:27] Voice 2: reflected in this document. We've also updated a little bit in the chart that's in the background

[3:43:32] Voice 2: section, speaking to the body and activity. I'm not sure if the committee, given our time

[3:43:39] Voice 2: constraints today, wants me to go through everything. Again, this was at the October

[3:43:42] Voice 2: meeting. It's simply been updated for the changes that have happened, which FPC reviewed in an

[3:43:46] Voice 2: earlier briefing. It's reflecting a lot of the same information that we've already talked about.

[3:43:52] Voice 2: So a 10.5% general tax increase for local trust areas, 23.5% tax levy increase for Bowen. The

[3:44:00] Voice 2: total planned spending is $10.8 million. 9.6 of that is for operations. $807,000 is directed to

[3:44:08] Voice 2: projects and $364,000 is going to the capital purchases. So I can answer questions or go

[3:44:16] Voice 2: through the thing in detail. What do you prefer, Chair?

[3:44:21] Trustee Bernardo: Let's see if people have got questions

[3:44:23] Trustee Bernardo: here. You're right. We're constricted on time here, as usual. So let's zero in on the things

[3:44:32] Trustee Bernardo: that people care about the most. I appreciate your point that what you have prepared is a draft

[3:44:36] Trustee Bernardo: budget for presentation to trust council to let them know in december where this what the state

[3:44:41] Trustee Bernardo: of play is i think it's going to be incumbent on us in december at that meeting to provide some

[3:44:50] Trustee Bernardo: sort of explanation uh to trust council as to whether we think as a committee uh whether what

[3:44:59] Trustee Bernardo: we're presenting to them in draft form uh is going in the right direction i mean this is what we have

[3:45:06] Trustee Bernardo: at the moment it doesn't necessarily mean we have to buy into it uh it doesn't necessarily

[3:45:10] Trustee Bernardo: mean that we can't make uh requests that things be adjusted but

[3:45:16] Voice 8: this is where we're at with the

[3:45:17] Voice 8: current process so um do we have any specific observations about the budget that

[3:45:27] Trustee Bernardo: uh people

[3:45:28] Trustee Bernardo: want to comment on and changes that they think should be um

[3:45:33] Voice 8: introduced to this draft that will

[3:45:36] Voice 8: will go into simple trustee bowman i

[3:45:44] Voice 11: have a couple of things number one uh could you

[3:45:46] Voice 11: julia quickly speak to why the bone island municipality tax levy increases so large

[3:45:54] Voice 11: it's always much larger because i know only certain components go into it but if you could

[3:46:01] Voice 11: just quickly speak to that and then um i have um i do have a motion which at some stage i would

[3:46:09] Voice 11: like to put forward to do with um what a recommendation to trust council to look at

[3:46:15] Voice 11: resources specifically i don't know where we can find a place for that but i would like to put that

[3:46:22] Voice 11: motion forward so okay julia uh

[3:46:27] Voice 2: certainly so there's two main reasons that the bowen island

[3:46:30] Voice 2: tax levy is increasing this year uh the first has to do um with their the administration allocation

[3:46:37] Voice 2: allocation. So Bowen Island contributes to the portions of the budget that are not planning

[3:46:43] Voice 2: related. So where we see portions of the budget that are not planning related increasing at a

[3:46:48] Voice 2: faster rate than the planning portion of the budget, we see the contribution by Bowen Island

[3:46:53] Voice 2: increase and that is something that is happening in next fiscal year. I think last year the

[3:46:58] Voice 2: contribution rate was around 29% for the admin allocation and now it's at 30%. So that is one

[3:47:05] Voice 2: one reason. The other reason is that the draw from surplus in next year's draft budget is not

[3:47:13] Voice 2: affording Bowen Island any credit. So typically what we see is when we draw money out of surplus

[3:47:19] Voice 2: to offset spending in the budget, Bowen Island would also benefit from that. What's happening

[3:47:25] Voice 2: in the draft budget that's before you is all of those surplus draws are being directed towards

[3:47:31] Voice 2: awards planning-related work, and therefore, because Bowen does not contribute to planning-related

[3:47:36] Voice 2: work, they are not being afforded a credit for that. So those are the two primary drivers of

[3:47:41] Voice 2: the change in Bowen Island.

[3:47:44] Voice 8: Thanks. What about you, Patrick?

[3:47:50] Trustee Patrick: Well, as I said, I think we do need

[3:47:52] Trustee Patrick: to flag the $110,000 that is identified for the Regional Planning Committee's housing needs

[3:47:58] Trustee Patrick: reports for the Northern and Southern Gulf Islands because the legislation has changed.

[3:48:02] Trustee Patrick: changed so there there will be a change to that number we just don't have that data yet um

[3:48:09] Trustee Patrick: can

[3:48:10] Voice 15: you explain what you mean by flag i mean

[3:48:12] Trustee Patrick: well i don't know how we can we either should

[3:48:15] Trustee Patrick: remove it and calculate without it or um you know i'm just saying we the the legislation is just

[3:48:22] Trustee Patrick: being you know passing through the house and will be affecting um quite quickly here uh the

[3:48:30] Trustee Patrick: the requirement that we were responding to from a time wise is changing.

[3:48:34] Trustee Patrick: I don't see that, that, you know,

[3:48:38] Trustee Patrick: so the deadline is going to be different.

[3:48:40] Trustee Patrick: It's going to move out three years and it's going to be a whole new process

[3:48:45] Trustee Patrick: that we don't even know what it looks like yet. So we can't,

[3:48:47] Trustee Patrick: we can't respond to it until the legislation and regulations are in our,

[3:48:52] Trustee Patrick: onto us.

[3:48:53] Trustee Patrick: The regional planning committee will discuss this next Wednesday in terms of,

[3:48:57] Trustee Patrick: of, you know, what we know with staff, staffers,

[3:49:00] Trustee Patrick: you know rushing to get us a briefing so we can have a conversation about it but it will affect

[3:49:05] Trustee Patrick: this budget that that we know can you

[3:49:09] Trustee Bernardo: explain are you in a position to tell us when the regulation

[3:49:12] Trustee Bernardo: will come into force or when yes

[3:49:14] Trustee Patrick: the the right the draft legislation has the deadline the reports

[3:49:19] Trustee Patrick: would be due on or before december 31st 2028 so they're removing the the current clause that said

[3:49:27] Trustee Patrick: we had to update them every five years um so that our deadline was coming that's being struck from

[3:49:33] Trustee Patrick: the legislation so

[3:49:35] Trustee Bernardo: the deadline's falling away but when is that

[3:49:37] Trustee Bernardo: when is when is that change to

[3:49:40] Trustee Bernardo: the deadline to the regulation itself right now the

[3:49:44] Trustee Bernardo: regulation is what it is it's got the five

[3:49:46] Trustee Bernardo: years right

[3:49:47] Trustee Patrick: it's it's passing through legislation as we speak okay

[3:49:51] Trustee Bernardo: but what is the projected second

[3:49:53] Trustee Patrick: second reading at the house at this moment yeah I mean the new deadline is proposed for to be 2028.

[3:50:00] Voice 1: I can

[3:50:01] Voice 1: help you with this sir please Mr Martin and I think Stefan might want to say the same

[3:50:06] Voice 1: thing uh just go ahead Stefan okay the um yeah so there is that is true the legislation is changing

[3:50:14] Voice 1: and we expect the regulations uh to be out in December we won't know until the regulations

[3:50:20] Voice 1: come out exactly what the requirements will be. We do have to have reports done by December

[3:50:29] Voice 1: of 2028. However, there's also a transitional requirement that requires that local governments

[3:50:38] Voice 1: have to look at their existing housing agreements and either receive a new one or update their

[3:50:44] Voice 1: existing ones to include the 20-year provision which is new so we're not uh we can't do nothing

[3:50:51] Voice 1: until 2028 and and the requirement to update your transitional or your your interim uh reports the

[3:51:01] Voice 1: current ones uh is by a prescribed date and that date will be prescribed in the regulation so we

[3:51:07] Voice 1: don't have the answer for that and we won't have that until at least december all

[3:51:13] Trustee Bernardo: right but december

[3:51:13] Trustee Bernardo: is three months before our year end

[3:51:18] Voice 8: and before we need the budget.

[3:51:20] Voice 8: Director Mobbs, I've got a question for Director Mobbs

[3:51:27] Voice 8: that relates to this.

[3:51:29] Voice 8: How

[3:51:30] Trustee Bernardo: can we manage this in the budget

[3:51:32] Trustee Bernardo: if the reality is that the regulation

[3:51:35] Trustee Bernardo: that we're budgeting for is going to be changed

[3:51:39] Trustee Bernardo: by the end of December?

[3:51:44] Voice 8: Shouldn't we be addressing that

[3:51:47] Trustee Bernardo: in the budget

[3:51:47] Trustee Bernardo: in some fashion?

[3:51:48] Trustee Bernardo: So

[3:51:50] Voice 2: we do have opportunity to make changes to the draft budget the whole way through the budget cycle.

[3:51:55] Voice 2: So we've got up until March.

[3:51:56] Voice 2: So if we have an understanding of new legislation in December, we can make updates subsequent before approval in March.

[3:52:02] Voice 2: There's space for that.

[3:52:05] Voice 8: Well, it seems

[3:52:06] Trustee Bernardo: from what we're hearing that we need, when this goes to Trust Council, that this point needs to be explained in some pretty sophisticated detail.

[3:52:17] Trustee Bernardo: detail, because the number that we've got here, what is it, $210,000 that we're setting aside

[3:52:22] Trustee Bernardo: for it, is basically a placeholder based on law that we expect

[3:52:27] Voice 8: will become a dead letter by the

[3:52:29] Voice 8: end of December, right?

[3:52:34] Voice 2: I think that's what I'm hearing. I'm not so familiar with the legislation,

[3:52:38] Voice 2: so that's a tougher space for me, but that's what I'm hearing here.

[3:52:41] Voice 8: Right. I think we need at least

[3:52:47] Voice 8: some kind of note in the

[3:52:49] Trustee Bernardo: budget or in the presentation of the budget to make clear to

[3:52:52] Trustee Bernardo: people at trust council that we have no certainty about this 210 000 number for the housing needs

[3:52:59] Trustee Bernardo: assessment at all because the situation is changing and that we may well have a significantly

[3:53:06] Trustee Bernardo: well we don't know it might be a greater it might be a smaller number but if we are in a situation

[3:53:13] Trustee Bernardo: where there's going to be a transitional period and the new deadline is 2028 i'm assuming whatever

[3:53:21] Trustee Bernardo: whatever transitional information is required

[3:53:23] Trustee Bernardo: to update what we already have in place

[3:53:28] Trustee Bernardo: is not going to be as comprehensive as,

[3:53:30] Trustee Bernardo: and I think it was $110,000, sorry,

[3:53:32] Trustee Bernardo: but I don't think it's going to be as comprehensive

[3:53:36] Trustee Bernardo: and as expensive as we already anticipate,

[3:53:39] Trustee Bernardo: or at least that's a possibility.

[3:53:42] Trustee Bernardo: Should we explain that to trust counsel

[3:53:44] Trustee Bernardo: and point out to them this is a very soft number?

[3:53:49] Voice 2: That could certainly be added.

[3:53:51] Voice 2: I see Director Cermak has his hand up,

[3:53:53] Voice 2: who's probably the best person to speak to this this is his business case and he'll have the best

[3:53:57] Voice 2: understanding of of what's going on with this one

[3:54:00] Trustee Bernardo: all right uh director mobs has dodged the issue

[3:54:04] Trustee Bernardo: and sending it over to you director mr mack thank

[3:54:08] Voice 20: you mr chair just a point of clarity it's 110 000

[3:54:11] Voice 20: not to over 200. yeah i think that's what you were quoting i believe um so just a few points

[3:54:21] Voice 20: of clarity that um we oh you hear me still

[3:54:25] Voice 18: i'm

[3:54:27] Voice 20: getting error messages on zoom pardon me yeah you

[3:54:30] Trustee Bernardo: you died out you you froze for just a couple of seconds i

[3:54:34] Voice 20: am now having non-stop zoom issues as

[3:54:38] Voice 8: soon as this uh yeah you're breaking up all right let's just move on uh let's

[3:54:45] Trustee Bernardo: hear from trustee

[3:54:46] Trustee Bernardo: evans and we'll get back to director of supermarket when he has a better um connection trustee evans

[3:54:52] Trustee Bernardo: Hi,

[3:54:54] Voice 9: thank you. I have a couple of questions. I'm on page 52, looking at the strategic plan

[3:55:01] Voice 9: projects. And I have a question regarding the policy statement amendment. So it looks like

[3:55:06] Voice 9: we've spent $34,000 from a $30,000 budget for the year, but no trustee work has been done on this.

[3:55:15] Voice 9: So I'm just curious as to where that $34,000 was spent, which has gone over budget and the

[3:55:21] Voice 9: the trustees still haven't even seen the document yet.

[3:55:23] Voice 8: So how is that possible?

[3:55:24] Voice 8: That's question number one.

[3:55:31] Voice 8: I don't know who can answer that.

[3:55:33] Voice 8: Director Moms.

[3:55:35] Voice 2: So I missed the page reference, which will be helpful.

[3:55:38] Voice 2: Can you provide that again?

[3:55:39] Voice 2: Page 52,

[3:55:40] Voice 9: under strategic plan projects,

[3:55:45] Voice 9: I'm looking that we had a budget of 30,000.

[3:55:48] Voice 9: 34,000 has been spent in the first two quarters.

[3:55:53] Voice 9: And I'm wondering how did that $34,000 get spent?

[3:55:56] Voice 9: because we haven't, trustees haven't even seen the document yet. So

[3:56:01] Voice 2: that $34,000 is a forecast.

[3:56:03] Voice 2: That's not the actual spending. So that document on page 52 is reflecting the budget and the

[3:56:08] Voice 2: forecast. So that could be planned spending for the rest of the fiscal year. So it

[3:56:15] Voice 2: says Q2 forecast,

[3:56:17] Voice 2: that's

[3:56:17] Voice 9: not Q2 spend. That's right, that's Q2 forecast. But Q2

[3:56:23] Voice 2: was September of this past year.

[3:56:25] Voice 2: Yes. So at the end of quarter two, we prepare a forecast and we call that Q2 forecast.

[3:56:30] Voice 2: And that is looking at where we think spending will land at the end of the current fiscal year.

[3:56:37] Voice 2: I see. So Q2 forecast is the next two quarters spend.

[3:56:42] Voice 2: That this is that's the forecast that's prepared at quarter two, which reflects anticipated full year spending.

[3:56:50] Voice 2: So we think $34,000 will be spent for all four quarters of the current fiscal year.

[3:56:56] Voice 2: Maybe we should change the heading of that column to be clearer.

[3:57:00] Voice 9: That, I think, would actually help answer a number of my questions.

[3:57:05] Voice 9: It says

[3:57:06] Voice 11: Kinty Fargo.

[3:57:08] Voice 9: Okay, yeah, that's why I found it confusing.

[3:57:12] Voice 9: Yeah, so the way that it stands right now, I don't think the trustees are going to see it.

[3:57:17] Voice 9: I doubt that we'll even see it before the end of the year.

[3:57:20] Voice 9: So then that would then just flow into surplus and then become available again, correct?

[3:57:25] Voice 9: correct?

[3:57:27] Voice 2: Yes. So at quarter three, we'll be updating our forecast. And so we'll have better

[3:57:32] Voice 2: information at that point as to what planned spending for the year is. If we do identify

[3:57:37] Voice 2: projects with underspending at that time or forecasted underspending, we do undertake an

[3:57:42] Voice 2: exercise to look at those projects and say, OK, what's going to be carrying on into next fiscal

[3:57:46] Voice 2: year for completion? And we'll draw those funds out of surplus next fiscal year. And then that'll

[3:57:52] Voice 2: will drop the request budget for next year? It could. It depends a little bit on what is

[3:58:01] Voice 2: requested. So if we are going to be doing more work next fiscal because we didn't complete a

[3:58:06] Voice 2: portion of it this fiscal, then we would just see the unspent dollars from this year flow into next

[3:58:12] Voice 2: year and add on to the request for next year. If that's not the case, if next year's budget

[3:58:20] Voice 2: budget request includes work that's not yet completed, then we would see the same dollars

[3:58:25] Voice 2: and a portion of them would be funded from surplus instead of taxation. Director Freider would know

[3:58:32] Voice 2: best whether or not that scenario, which of those two scenarios would need to play out. And that's

[3:58:37] Voice 2: a conversation that we have in quarter three. Okay, thank you.

[3:58:40] Voice 9: And my next question is on page

[3:58:42] Voice 9: 51 under by elections, we have $7,000 in there. That's just a placeholder in case something comes

[3:58:49] Voice 9: comes up not that we're anticipating something to come up correct that's

[3:58:53] Voice 2: right there is a policy

[3:58:53] Voice 2: that says we'll fund that each year in case there's a by-election required okay thank you

[3:58:59] Voice 8: very much those were my questions uh i have

[3:59:07] Voice 11: two two points to make i hope we're and i hope they're

[3:59:11] Voice 11: still relevant i've kind of lost track of the conversation at this stage number one the housing

[3:59:16] Voice 11: assessment funding if we do make a note don't forget there are two aspects to it number one

[3:59:22] Voice 11: One, as Laura has highlighted, it may change entirely.

[3:59:27] Voice 11: The requirement to do it and or the deadline for an alternative will change or may change.

[3:59:34] Voice 11: And the second thing is that we have the strong intention to ask the province to fund that.

[3:59:40] Voice 11: So I do believe that if we appear to be funding it and appear to be going ahead,

[3:59:47] Voice 11: we need to make it really clear that this is a very tentative bucket of money

[3:59:51] Voice 11: money so that the province don't just throw their hands up and go, oh, well, you know,

[3:59:55] Voice 11: come back to us later some other time. I feel like we should almost put a

[4:00:00] Voice 11: in the sand and say we'll do it we'll you know defer it pending clarification and we'll do

[4:00:07] Voice 11: it if you help us and that's one thing uh in in with respect to business cases um i did look at

[4:00:15] Voice 11: the gabriola one where the fresh water study is bundled in and i understand gabriola has

[4:00:21] Voice 11: has problems with water and needs to do some work there but there isn't any detail about what that

[4:00:28] Voice 11: freshwater study will entail. It does reference work done on North Penn during Galliano.

[4:00:35] Voice 11: And I did go back then and look, and I realized that the studies done by Groundwater Solutions,

[4:00:42] Voice 11: which were quite expensive, Gabriola, as far as I know, was included in those studies. So we have

[4:00:49] Voice 11: have three studies and there were studies done in 2017 by Nanaimo um covering Gabriola water

[4:00:57] Voice 11: so I'm just curious as to and we have a freshwater specialist on staff so I'm kind of unclear as to

[4:01:05] Voice 11: what 50,000 will be spent on for that and I would appreciate more detail in the business case for

[4:01:13] Voice 11: that specifically i i acknowledge that there is a problem and you will need information to support

[4:01:21] Voice 11: your view but i'm just concerned about the amount and the lack of clarity about the use of the other

[4:01:27] Voice 11: reports

[4:01:27] Voice 8: thank you uh thank you chair so

[4:01:36] Trustee Elliott: in response to that last question um i this has been brought

[4:01:41] Trustee Elliott: up at our ltc meetings and the planner assigned to the project i was just looking at um previous

[4:01:48] Trustee Elliott: this email discussions uh we are definitely in conversation with william shulba and we have the

[4:01:56] Trustee Elliott: data for gabriela but there is no water balance analysis so it doesn't matter how many data points

[4:02:04] Trustee Elliott: you have but the analysis is critical to do land use planning you can't do it without it and that's

[4:02:10] Trustee Elliott: why they reference north pender because the water balance analysis has been done so that can be

[4:02:16] Trustee Elliott: applied to the suitability analysis or land suitability analysis so it's i believe it's

[4:02:23] Trustee Elliott: been done on all the islands but the analysis has not been conducted on all the islands except

[4:02:28] Trustee Elliott: to galliano and north pender and i see director zermax on hand to maybe answer that and i just

[4:02:36] Trustee Elliott: wanted to talk about the um the business case for the itc um a full-time person but maybe

[4:02:44] Trustee Elliott: Maybe if others have input on the water balance piece, we could speak to that first.

[4:02:51] Trustee Bernardo: You've returned and we lost your signal when you were talking about the housing needs assessment issues.

[4:02:59] Trustee Bernardo: So perhaps you could complete your thoughts there.

[4:03:03] Voice 20: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[4:03:04] Voice 20: I apologize for the poor internet connection.

[4:03:07] Voice 20: Just want to finish the thought about the housing needs reports.

[4:03:10] Voice 20: reports. The intention that we've heard from the province is to come out with regulations

[4:03:16] Voice 20: in January, or as we heard by the end of December, and they have interim measures that they're

[4:03:23] Voice 20: talking about. That means we'll have to have an approved interim housing needs report by

[4:03:29] Voice 20: the following year, January 2025, which is next fiscal. And for clarity, we are drafting

[4:03:35] Voice 20: as we speak actually putting the final touches on a briefing to the regional planning committee

[4:03:40] Voice 20: as noted it will go to executive committee I imagine they will forward it to trust council

[4:03:45] Voice 20: and as discussed at executive committee we were proposing to refer that to all LTCs because we

[4:03:52] Voice 20: recognize the great interest on that so that would be a briefing that goes out so you'll get more

[4:03:56] Voice 20: information on that so just want to really clarify that it is still required to having

[4:04:02] Voice 20: a housing needs report as of the next fiscal. There is no period of grace going into 2028.

[4:04:10] Voice 20: The only difference is that the provincial staff will evaluate what we have if it meets this

[4:04:16] Voice 20: interim measure according to the regulations that are coming out in January. So we'll, staff will

[4:04:23] Voice 20: provide an assessment of whatever those regulatory changes are, whatever the interim measures are

[4:04:27] Voice 20: that they approve, but we can be well assured the date might not be exactly January 2025 next year,

[4:04:34] Voice 20: but it'll be during next fiscal that we must have an interim housing needs report in place,

[4:04:39] Voice 20: which will only be equal to or greater than what is currently required. So that cost of a housing

[4:04:47] Voice 20: needs report is not going to go down in any way. The only difference might be how it is supported.

[4:04:53] Voice 20: It's already been supported by the Regional Planning Committee in its existing form and staff did provide up to four different options of what to do about it. So I just want to make those points clear. If you have any questions, I can answer them.

[4:05:07] Trustee Bernardo: That's very helpful, Director Cermak, to know that based on your analysis of the new regulation, it's not going to have a cost impact

[4:05:16] Trustee Bernardo: impact in terms of what needs to be done in terms of assessing things over the next fiscal year.

[4:05:24] Trustee Bernardo: That's pretty helpful to know. Thank you. Trustee Patrick.

[4:05:28] Trustee Patrick: Oh, that's not what he said.

[4:05:30] Voice 20: Yeah, I'm not sure I heard the same thing.

[4:05:32] Trustee Patrick: We assumed that only the North Islands and Southern Islands were involved in this dollar

[4:05:37] Trustee Patrick: value. Salt Spring would be captured by these regulatory changes as well. So the number is

[4:05:43] Trustee Patrick: still unknown and the effect is still unknown and I think that's why I said red circle this number

[4:05:49] Trustee Patrick: stay tuned there will be changes I think we can all we all understand that we just don't

[4:05:55] Trustee Patrick: know what they are the other point I just wanted

[4:05:57] Trustee Bernardo: to raise at the fiscal level is it fair to say

[4:06:00] Trustee Bernardo: that the cost isn't going to go down I

[4:06:04] Trustee Patrick: don't know I'm just saying I don't know and I'm still

[4:06:10] Trustee Patrick: still optimistic the province is going to put some money into the pot to pay that they paid

[4:06:16] Trustee Patrick: for these last time um and i would be absolutely shocked that they don't pay for them again so

[4:06:22] Trustee Patrick: there is a chance the number will go down if the province puts money um you know against all these

[4:06:29] Trustee Patrick: municipalities they're not happy listening to the debate in the legislation not everyone's going yay

[4:06:35] Trustee Patrick: to these regulations um and so the province will highly likely throw money on the table to

[4:06:40] Trustee Patrick: pay for all these added reports when they do this. So, I mean, stay tuned is all I can say.

[4:06:48] Trustee Patrick: I think we are in a moving target time period. The point I would like to make, though, about water

[4:06:55] Trustee Patrick: is last term, we started with local trust committees doing their own water work. Then

[4:07:00] Trustee Patrick: we went to a regional approach for the water studies so that we would time phase and get the

[4:07:06] Trustee Patrick: efficiencies of working from a regional approach and it looks like now we're going back to

[4:07:11] Trustee Patrick: individual local trust committees because there have we staff have not brought forward any plans

[4:07:17] Trustee Patrick: to do the continued studies in a overall regional approach because there have been no business cases

[4:07:26] Trustee Patrick: brought forward on it so I'm confused and under you know are we now back to all local trust

[4:07:32] Trustee Patrick: committee's battle on water or are we sticking to our strategic plan and doing it from a regional

[4:07:37] Voice 8: perspective director cermak can you answer that question i

[4:07:48] Voice 20: can certainly try it mr chair there

[4:07:50] Voice 20: is a report going to the regional planning committee yet another report that's being

[4:07:54] Voice 20: finalized today and that is in regards to that very same question it is still proposed to take

[4:08:01] Voice 20: a regional approach uh it is the report that was supposed to go in september or was anticipated

[4:08:06] Voice 20: but it didn't, Chair Patrick of the RBC was right, it didn't make it.

[4:08:10] Voice 20: There's a proposal going forward to seek funding from a very specific grant opportunity

[4:08:15] Voice 20: to advance as many water balance assessments as possible,

[4:08:20] Voice 20: focused on the northern region with especially those LTCs doing OCP amendments,

[4:08:27] Voice 20: where this water balance assessment would be of help.

[4:08:31] Voice 20: So there's limited funding available.

[4:08:32] Voice 20: but we recognize the fiscal constraints and so we were seeking funding we have some opportunities

[4:08:39] Voice 20: we think we can follow down and that report it should be on the regional planning committee

[4:08:42] Voice 20: agenda tomorrow so still a regional approach when possible the only other issue was that we weren't

[4:08:49] Voice 20: sure internally if would be supported or not by regional planning committee or finance planning

[4:08:55] Voice 20: and committee or ultimately trust council. So staff included an optional addition to the

[4:09:02] Voice 20: Gabriola LTC to ensure it got done because they would like to make sure that that LTC project

[4:09:07] Voice 20: completes, it gets done in a timely manner. And they felt that that was critical data

[4:09:14] Voice 20: to get it done. And the water balance is a big topic. I don't think we have time at this

[4:09:19] Voice 20: meeting to talk about, but what's been done is measuring the input, which is

[4:09:24] Voice 20: relatively straightforward math but measuring the output is where the challenges have been

[4:09:28] Voice 20: and a bit of discrepancy and modeling adjustments and it's a fine it's we're getting better at as

[4:09:34] Voice 20: we go and that's the work that needs to happen is uh is measuring the sort of the output where's

[4:09:39] Voice 20: the demand side as opposed to the supply thank

[4:09:43] Voice 8: you um we're

[4:09:47] Trustee Bernardo: we're down to about 50 minutes left here

[4:09:50] Trustee Bernardo: and we're gonna have to do something that's extremely difficult which is exercise some

[4:09:54] Trustee Bernardo: self-discipline on ourselves in terms of waiting in on every micro topic that we have to deal with

[4:10:00] Trustee Bernardo: here uh after we hear we have three i see three people want to speak after i and trustee harris

[4:10:08] Trustee Bernardo: is the last in line after we hear from trustee harris i'm going to go back to trustee boland

[4:10:13] Trustee Bernardo: who apparently has a motion she wants to make uh let's make sure she's got time to deal with that

[4:10:18] Trustee Bernardo: and if anybody else has motions they want to make they ought to pipe up uh because let's deal with

[4:10:24] Trustee Bernardo: with that and then see how much time we've got left

[4:10:28] Trustee Bernardo: to deal with the other matters.

[4:10:29] Trustee Bernardo: But let's try to be efficient.

[4:10:31] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Yates, please.

[4:10:34] Voice 3: Thank you, Chair Boland.

[4:10:37] Voice 3: Because I have to leave at 2.20,

[4:10:39] Voice 3: I wanted to make sure that I spoke in favor

[4:10:42] Voice 3: of the ITC additional staff capacity.

[4:10:46] Voice 3: And the business case is still in development

[4:10:49] Voice 3: and everybody feels really badly about that.

[4:10:52] Voice 3: But I know that Claire Freider right now has so much to do. I don't even know how she's getting anything done. And I wanted to, on her behalf and on behalf of the Conservancy Board, of which I'm a member, say that in the past years, we have been too frugal in asking for what we really needed to do the proper conservation work with the proper staffing levels and the proper mapping equipment and GIS support.

[4:11:22] Voice 3: report that we just we just haven't had and because we've just been too frugal in the past

[4:11:28] Voice 3: few years and yesterday for example i sent a whole bunch of questions to itc staff to regular

[4:11:35] Voice 3: planning staff about mapping for gabriola relating to our community plan and it just isn't there so

[4:11:42] Voice 3: i wanted to put in a word uh for that business case for the islands trust conservancy the more

[4:11:50] Voice 3: The more work we do in Conservancy, the more support that requires with staffing and mapping and all those kinds of resources and it's really important work that we are respected for. So I'll leave it at

[4:12:04] Voice 8: that. Thank you.

[4:12:04] Voice 8: Thank you. I'll

[4:12:11] Trustee Elliott: just echo that. We are deeply challenged with some staff vacancies and people being ill. And I think that is a symptom of the type of workload we keep asking.

[4:12:25] Trustee Elliott: So to perpetuate this problem at the conservancy level anyways, this is illustrative of the problem. We've got a senior staff member who's trying to prepare that business case for an absent ITC manager who's on leave, and that director is also doing multiple other jobs that she's trying to cover off.

[4:12:46] Trustee Elliott: So I would just basically beg this committee's indulgence to leave the placeholder line for that FTE position.

[4:12:53] Trustee Elliott: I believe the business case is coming and will come probably to executive committee and then trust counsel.

[4:12:59] Trustee Elliott: And I understand this is not the way we want to work, but it is recognizing that we're severely limited right now.

[4:13:06] Trustee Elliott: And we just can't ask staff to do more than they're doing.

[4:13:10] Trustee Elliott: And that's simply why there isn't a business case prepared.

[4:13:12] Trustee Elliott: So, thank

[4:13:15] Voice 8: you. I'm, I'm worried about the, the whole, the water deal with

[4:13:29] Voice 6: the, the full time hydrologists idea, you know, I struggle.

[4:13:35] Voice 6: I see that you can get a building permit on Salt Spring anyhow, with, with a rain catchment program. You don't have to drill a well.

[4:13:52] Voice 6: when when somebody's permit goes through they have to prove water either by rain catchment

[4:13:59] Voice 6: or storage or a drilled well or a dug well or town water and then hydrologists there's two

[4:14:09] Voice 6: other separate hydrologists there's one at the ministry of the environment that's dealt with

[4:14:13] Voice 6: and the one on the um on the crd side you know i look at bermuda for instance it's a smaller than

[4:14:22] Voice 6: salt spring it has 65 000 residents 65 000 bermuda and it's mostly rain catchment down there so i i

[4:14:33] Voice 6: see the us us being in the water business needs to stop in my view and many others um i'll leave

[4:14:42] Voice 8: it there well um without getting into the substance of trustee harris's

[4:14:53] Trustee Bernardo: point i mean we

[4:14:54] Trustee Bernardo: have this persistent dilemma of fiscal our job here is not to determine policies uh or operational

[4:15:02] Trustee Bernardo: issues it's basically to guarantee fiscal rectitude but that necessarily intercepts

[4:15:09] Trustee Bernardo: with some of these policy issues and we keep getting drawn into discussions about the merits

[4:15:15] Trustee Bernardo: of these things. It's a challenge to get the balance right in these discussions.

[4:15:21] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Boland, you have a motion you want to make, so you now have time to make it,

[4:15:25] Trustee Bernardo: and we're down to the last 45 minutes or so.

[4:15:31] Voice 11: Okay. I've sent it to Robert, so if he can put the motion up, I would appreciate that.

[4:15:37] Voice 11: and you know I'm coming from the perspective that if you look at our progress our progress

[4:15:49] Voice 11: is handicapped by recurring vacancies and staff leave etc and adding more staff positions isn't

[4:16:03] Voice 11: necessarily going to fix it but i do recognize that staff are overloaded i let i read the risk

[4:16:10] Voice 11: part of the trust policy statement and you know it's but there's a list of things in there that

[4:16:18] Voice 11: could be removed you know there are a list of things which are taking time and so right through

[4:16:25] Voice 11: our entire budget there are things which in my view when i you know did you know planning in my

[4:16:33] Voice 11: corporate world, there were things described as must-dos and nice-to-dos, must-haves and

[4:16:42] Voice 11: nice-to-haves. And I think we have a lot of nice-to-haves because we are continuing with

[4:16:48] Voice 11: business as normal in the status quo, while we are faced with a lack of a corporate plan

[4:16:53] Voice 11: and a lack of resources to address the issues discussed in the governance review. And we are

[4:17:00] Voice 11: are taking on increased responsibilities and reconciliation and increased responsibilities

[4:17:06] Voice 11: this year at least with respect to the housing so um i think something has to give and we are

[4:17:14] Voice 11: constantly being asked by staff to prioritize and we just provide more requests can you do this can

[4:17:21] Voice 11: you do that let's have more of this and more of that and it's done in a very you know well-meaning

[4:17:27] Voice 11: fashion but it's spread out across a big um you know what's the word jigsaw pieces because our

[4:17:37] Voice 11: our our um committee construct with all of the meetings and the interaction of the different

[4:17:45] Voice 11: agendas makes it very difficult i mean i to to get a coherent picture of the whole

[4:17:52] Voice 11: so you know I attend other meetings and I look at agendas I'm on financial planning and regional

[4:17:59] Voice 11: planning um and you know I look at the agendas of other meetings and I try and look at the business

[4:18:06] Voice 11: cases and really you know um make sure that that I'm up to speed but that's not that's not easy

[4:18:14] Voice 11: anyway I come to my motion which is that we should put together a table and I'm happy to do it

[4:18:22] Voice 11: of all the business cases their financial cost their staff hours all together in one table

[4:18:31] Voice 11: and put it in front of trust council and say okay look at progress against plans for last year and

[4:18:38] Voice 11: the list you know the reasons why the progress was not made and it's quite astonishing really

[4:18:46] Voice 11: because we went into that year confident that we had the resources and it was all

[4:18:50] Voice 11: feasibility reports etc etc look at staff vacancies and the turnover rate we've lost

[4:18:57] Voice 11: two senior intergovernmental policy advisors in as many years and there are other vacancies

[4:19:03] Voice 11: that we see all the time and people even you know um being seconded to external to places in

[4:19:14] Voice 11: and the Trust, the risks posed by unavailability

[4:19:18] Voice 11: of staff resources as described in the business cases.

[4:19:22] Voice 11: And it is actually, that is one area

[4:19:24] Voice 11: that is pretty comprehensive in many of the business cases

[4:19:27] Voice 11: with some of the key activities.

[4:19:29] Voice 11: And we, Trust Council should contemplate

[4:19:33] Voice 11: some prioritization and deferring some activities

[4:19:38] Voice 11: so that critical work can be accomplished

[4:19:40] Voice 11: and staff stress and load be reduced.

[4:19:42] Voice 11: reduced and so it's not all about the money there is an impact and if we do reduce some of the

[4:19:50] Voice 11: activities just defer them and say okay last year we said no heritage grants that didn't just reduce

[4:19:57] Voice 11: like eight thousand dollars ten thousand dollars it probably took 40 staff hours out of the picture

[4:20:03] Voice 11: well now we turn it on its head and we say look at the staff resources and put you know put in

[4:20:09] Voice 11: there the fact that we need 400 whatever hours to do the core plan and that has a timeline it

[4:20:16] Voice 11: cannot be deferred or it's or it's failed um and we look across that and just consider going okay

[4:20:23] Voice 11: we are in a bind we have a lot of issues and we have things we need to address and move forward

[4:20:31] Voice 11: and here is the time where the rubber meets the road just set some priorities and that doesn't

[4:20:37] Voice 11: mean setting priorities it actually means like canning the things that fall down the list

[4:20:43] Voice 11: you can't just go let's do these ones first and leave

[4:20:47] Trustee Bernardo: the trustee i'm sorry i'm sorry interrupt

[4:20:50] Trustee Bernardo: trustee bone but i believe we have your point and i would want to point out that um in your remarks

[4:20:58] Trustee Bernardo: uh what you're you mentioned something about presenting a table uh basically a report of

[4:21:05] Trustee Bernardo: sorts to trust counsel to um expedite this review you're talking about um the motion is written

[4:21:14] Trustee Bernardo: doesn't um it throws the issue as you've described it the substance of the issue

[4:21:21] Trustee Bernardo: to trust counsel but it doesn't provide for how trust counsel or it doesn't provide

[4:21:29] Trustee Bernardo: um a mechanism for the information getting to trust counsel

[4:21:33] Voice 10: okay is

[4:21:35] Trustee Bernardo: this something that you

[4:21:37] Trustee Bernardo: You want staff to prepare this report that goes to Trust Council.

[4:21:41] Voice 11: Yes, or I can work with Julia to prepare it.

[4:21:45] Voice 11: I mean, the material is there.

[4:21:46] Voice 11: It's just a way of pulling it together into an easy-to-view table, I believe.

[4:21:52] Voice 11: But Julia, could you

[4:21:53] Voice 10: answer that, please?

[4:21:58] Voice 2: So putting together a table that summarizes costs and staff hours, certainly doable.

[4:22:03] Voice 2: We've already got a table that accomplishes that mostly ready to go.

[4:22:11] Voice 2: Some of these pieces might be a little more difficult.

[4:22:15] Voice 2: So progress against plans for last year.

[4:22:17] Voice 2: I think that means for the current year or do you mean the previous fiscal year?

[4:22:20] Voice 2: I mean, the one that you presented

[4:22:22] Voice 11: today, just the fact that, you know, your forecast of the spends, for instance, the program with the 17 percent spent.

[4:22:32] Voice 11: that table is is adequate as far as i'm concerned but if we need to say for fiscal year 20

[4:22:39] Voice 11: whatever it is 22 23 is that you know 23 24 no yeah yeah

[4:22:46] Voice 2: or just for the current year

[4:22:47] Voice 2: yeah okay

[4:22:48] Voice 2: yes it's fine

[4:22:50] Voice 11: parent here okay

[4:22:51] Voice 2: uh

[4:22:54] Voice 10: i believe in the table

[4:22:56] Trustee Bernardo: to do this work

[4:22:58] Trustee Bernardo: let's move this along here to do this work is it is the and i'm actually directing this question

[4:23:04] Trustee Bernardo: to director mobs is the resolution as currently phrased sufficient guidance and direction or

[4:23:11] Trustee Bernardo: whatever for staff to put together a package that will allow trust council to engage in the

[4:23:17] Trustee Bernardo: discussion that trustee bullen wants it to have or do we need to specifically say staff is requested

[4:23:26] Trustee Bernardo: to prepare a report that reviews blah blah blah and FPC recommends that Trust Council review the

[4:23:32] Trustee Bernardo: report and contemplate prioritizing blah blah blah.

[4:23:35] Voice 2: Yes certainly a more detailed resolution is

[4:23:38] Voice 2: is helpful a lot of what's requested here is already complete it's you know I think that the

[4:23:46] Voice 2: heart of the resolution if I'm hearing it is to consolidate a lot of these pieces of information

[4:23:51] Voice 2: so that conversation and decision-making at trust council might be better

[4:23:56] Voice 2: facilitated. Um, so that's,

[4:23:59] Voice 2: that's what I'm hearing a little with the exception of staff vacancies and

[4:24:02] Voice 2: turnover. I don't think that's really anywhere we would,

[4:24:04] Voice 2: we would need to draft that. Um, it's workable.

[4:24:09] Voice 2: It may not be in time, you know, very robust, but it's workable.

[4:24:18] Voice 8: So

[4:24:19] Voice 19: I think we need to start talking about timelines in this meeting,

[4:24:22] Voice 19: if i may um a report and what i mean is not the timelines of this meeting but the timelines of

[4:24:28] Voice 19: the information so we have presented to you uh the the business cases as we have we've

[4:24:34] Voice 19: contemplated them they've gone through the various committees and and i'm hearing that

[4:24:38] Voice 19: there's some work needed um it'd be great to get the specifics of that also you're hearing that

[4:24:44] Voice 19: there's a two or three items that you know the reality of of what we face and we have as much

[4:24:50] Voice 19: specificity as we can provide you right now more is to come given that march 31st is when

[4:24:55] Voice 19: is really your decision window in terms of generating new material for trust council

[4:25:01] Voice 19: coming up in december we've got six days so um the the agenda goes out on the 17th i expect to

[4:25:11] Voice 19: have materials in front of me by the 16th for me to approve them and so you might be contemplating

[4:25:18] Voice 19: something where you're going here's the budget here's some areas of concern trust council

[4:25:23] Voice 19: um keeping in mind that there are opportunities for um upwards or downwards work on the business

[4:25:29] Voice 19: cases as they get into the next business cycle into january and february for final approval

[4:25:35] Voice 19: could

[4:25:37] Voice 11: it be presented as an appendix so we agree that it's going to be because i have seen that

[4:25:43] Voice 11: happen where there are appendices and additives

[4:25:47] Trustee Bernardo: just a moment here trustee bowling the ceo has

[4:25:50] Trustee Bernardo: raised an issue here about timing about producing the work product director mobs is it feasible and

[4:25:56] Trustee Bernardo: by the way this motion hasn't been made yet it's it's being discussed as a possibility

[4:26:00] Trustee Bernardo: director mobs is it feasible to put together a version of this package that or this table that

[4:26:09] Trustee Bernardo: that Trustee Boland wants for discussion purposes

[4:26:12] Trustee Bernardo: the next trust council meeting?

[4:26:14] Trustee Bernardo: Is it feasible to do that in six days?

[4:26:18] Voice 2: It is with the exception of, you know,

[4:26:20] Voice 2: the third bullet, for example,

[4:26:21] Voice 2: risks posed by unavailability of staff resources

[4:26:24] Voice 2: in the business cases, you know,

[4:26:28] Voice 2: sort of summarizing that in a table might be hard

[4:26:31] Voice 2: in conjunction with everything else.

[4:26:32] Voice 2: We can bring forward the information

[4:26:34] Voice 2: in a more consolidated form.

[4:26:36] Voice 2: I think it's workable.

[4:26:37] Voice 2: the piece about contemplating prioritization and deferral of activities it's unclear to me

[4:26:44] Voice 2: if the request is asking trust council to consider that or financial planning to committees to

[4:26:50] Voice 2: consider that um i assume it's trust council yeah

[4:26:54] Trustee Bernardo: i guess i mean

[4:26:55] Voice 2: if you read

[4:26:55] Trustee Bernardo: if you read

[4:26:56] Trustee Bernardo: there's only one grammatical correction here that's needed which is this but it says recommend

[4:27:02] Trustee Bernardo: to trust council the tc reviews it should actually be singular review uh and then

[4:27:09] Trustee Bernardo: it's also asking the trust council contemplate prioritizing so this is all directed this is all

[4:27:16] Trustee Bernardo: a recommendation fpc is making uh to trust council the trust sounds will do this work of like

[4:27:24] Trustee Bernardo: consider these issues that trustee bullen has talked about my only question is and we really

[4:27:31] Trustee Bernardo: need to sort of focus on this is is this resolution sufficient to get staff to start doing the work or

[4:27:37] Trustee Bernardo: do we have to rewrite this resolution in the 30 minutes we have available? I think it's fine.

[4:27:43] Trustee Bernardo: Okay thank you. Trustee Boland I think you're in a position to make this resolution somebody can

[4:27:47] Trustee Bernardo: second it we can then discuss it the pros and cons about whether we pull the trigger on it or not.

[4:27:53] Trustee Bernardo: So if you want this resolution to happen I think now's the time to make it.

[4:27:57] Voice 11: Okay do you want me

[4:27:59] Voice 11: me to read it out or yeah of course there are people listening potentially okay I move that

[4:28:05] Voice 11: financial planning committee recommend to trust council that trust council review progress against

[4:28:12] Voice 11: plans for the current fiscal year staff vacancies and turnover risk posed by unavailability of staff

[4:28:19] Voice 11: resources described in business case as described in business cases staff resources required across

[4:28:26] Voice 11: all supported projects and activities and should we add in there for this budget for the coming

[4:28:32] Voice 11: budget yes

[4:28:35] Voice 8: for

[4:28:35] Voice 11: the yeah proposed

[4:28:37] Voice 10: budget or whatever yeah for the proposed budget and

[4:28:44] Voice 11: contemplate prioritizing and deferring some activities so the critical work can be accomplished

[4:28:50] Voice 11: and staff stress and load is reduced do

[4:28:55] Trustee Bernardo: we have a seconder

[4:28:56] Voice 11: i second

[4:28:57] Voice 9: i

[4:28:57] Trustee Bernardo: see christian has her hand

[4:28:59] Trustee Bernardo: up the motion is on the floor trustee bowen it's already spoken to it extensively uh does anybody

[4:29:06] Voice 8: have any further comments with respect to this motion i don't see any i'm going to get up for

[4:29:12] Voice 8: both those in favor please raise your hands please lower your hands those who are opposed please

[4:29:25] Voice 8: raise your hands all right the motion passes thank you um let's return to

[4:29:32] Trustee Bernardo: the rest of the discussion

[4:29:33] Trustee Bernardo: here. As I mentioned before, I have some reservations about these business cases. I just don't think

[4:29:41] Trustee Bernardo: they do the job. And then Trustees Elliott and Yates spoke with respect to their firm

[4:29:50] Trustee Bernardo: belief that the ITC position that doesn't have a business case with it, or the ITC request

[4:29:57] Trustee Bernardo: that doesn't have a business case with it.

[4:30:00] Trustee Bernardo: they're saying it's coming and they just want to keep that placeholder okay we can

[4:30:04] Trustee Bernardo: that's reasonable enough um but there are other uh requests uh for funding that don't have business

[4:30:12] Trustee Bernardo: cases uh that seem to be emerging from executive committee will

[4:30:17] Voice 8: we be seeing business cases for

[4:30:19] Voice 8: those things i mean we can take whatever we have to trust council

[4:30:28] Trustee Bernardo: and so long as we're clear it's

[4:30:29] Trustee Bernardo: on a provisional basis uh but we ought not be going to trust counsel and telling them by the way

[4:30:37] Trustee Bernardo: fbc's decided that the policy that requires business cases can be ignored in respect of

[4:30:44] Trustee Bernardo: expenditures i mean we can't do that policy is what it is so i i'm pleading here are we going

[4:30:52] Trustee Bernardo: to see business cases on these things uh uh

[4:30:55] Voice 8: some

[4:30:57] Voice 19: of the ec ones if you're speaking about those

[4:30:59] Voice 19: specifically um you know um i'll speak with julia about the the requirement you're referring to for

[4:31:10] Voice 19: business cases for all things all expenditures and i'm paraphrasing you and i apologize if that's

[4:31:17] Voice 19: incorrect but as has happened in the past many of these are just ongoing operational items

[4:31:24] Voice 19: um they're not new spends um the reconciliation budget is you know in in your future corporate

[4:31:33] Voice 19: world you'd see in a departmental budget spreadsheet that allocation um but for

[4:31:40] Voice 19: reconciliation that proposed amount is the operational reconciliation funding for the year

[4:31:46] Voice 19: that's pretty much what we've got here that's the the dollars that i would suggest are minimal

[4:31:52] Voice 19: in that particular case that would be allocated for the operation of that function. So it's not

[4:31:58] Voice 19: a new spend on a new idea or the acceleration of a project. These are less project specific

[4:32:06] Voice 19: and more operational items. Now, if it's inadequate and more operational detail is

[4:32:15] Voice 19: needed for each of those, I hear that, but they're not business case items in how we perceive

[4:32:22] Voice 19: business case delivery and um i would need to revisit the policy to see that that they

[4:32:30] Voice 19: would be required so now some of these might be gray um but you know communication is an

[4:32:36] Voice 19: ongoing function it has been for many years that's the operational funds that are associated

[4:32:40] Voice 19: with it as detailed those could be um detailed further i

[4:32:44] Trustee Bernardo: think i i have your point ceo we're

[4:32:47] Trustee Bernardo: We're looking at,

[4:32:47] Trustee Bernardo: let's not, let's not overdo it here.

[4:32:52] Voice 19: I don't want to do that.

[4:32:54] Trustee Bernardo: Yeah.

[4:32:56] Trustee Bernardo: I've got your point on that.

[4:32:58] Trustee Bernardo: And your point would have greater force if,

[4:33:01] Trustee Bernardo: if we actually had a corporate planning structure and we had made a

[4:33:05] Trustee Bernardo: commitment that was multi-year, but that's not how the system works.

[4:33:09] Trustee Bernardo: We renew these commitments on an annualized basis and just saying, Oh,

[4:33:13] Trustee Bernardo: well, we're just carrying on from the year before.

[4:33:15] Trustee Bernardo: doesn't address the need to assess the value of what the effort is.

[4:33:20] Trustee Bernardo: You referred to the policy statement.

[4:33:23] Trustee Bernardo: My specific question here is I just do not understand

[4:33:26] Trustee Bernardo: why there's a request for money for a communication strategy

[4:33:31] Trustee Bernardo: and public engagement without a clear expectation

[4:33:35] Trustee Bernardo: that the policy statement will actually happen in the next fiscal year.

[4:33:41] Voice 8: We haven't even seen it.

[4:33:43] Voice 8: The trustees certainly haven't seen it.

[4:33:46] Voice 8: And

[4:33:46] Trustee Bernardo: so it seems a little weird, frankly, to sort of be setting aside money for engagement and communication and all that stuff before we actually have a product that trustees are confident that ought to go to the public.

[4:34:02] Trustee Bernardo: Well, shouldn't that step happen first?

[4:34:07] Voice 19: I

[4:34:07] Trustee Bernardo: would suggest that the

[4:34:09] Voice 19: communications budget and the policy

[4:34:11] Voice 19: statement budget are different budgets, sir.

[4:34:13] Voice 19: So

[4:34:14] Trustee Bernardo: I finished the thought, CEO. I would have liked to see that discussion within the business case, within a business case for that, to explain that why this money is necessary now, notwithstanding the kind of peculiar place we find ourselves with the project, which is kind of as far as the trustees are aware of. It's just this abstract idea that still isn't complete. So please go ahead.

[4:34:41] Voice 19: Yeah, so when you refer to the communications budget and the policy statement amendment project budget. Those are distinct dollars communications is general to the islands trust and for an organization that is has probably a deficit in communications function.

[4:34:59] Voice 19: This is a fairly reasonable, I would pretend, communications budget for the coming year.

[4:35:08] Voice 19: With regard to the Policy Statement Project, Trust Programs Committee has reviewed that work and the anticipated work that's to come.

[4:35:18] Voice 19: with the anticipate you know budgeting is um at least in my mind we're anticipating success in

[4:35:24] Voice 19: in getting um a policy statement project in hand that can be um relayed to communities and those

[4:35:33] Voice 19: dollars are to relay that so we wouldn't want to end up with a policy statement project and then

[4:35:39] Voice 19: have no funds for engagement associated with it we have potentially made that mistake in the past

[4:35:44] Voice 19: So I think what you're seeing here with the business case that has been supported by TPC and brought forward for your consideration is the anticipated communication spend associated with that project if it was successful.

[4:36:00] Voice 19: And of course, if it was not successful, we would not spend those dollars.

[4:36:07] Voice 8: All right. Trustee Larkin, you're muted if you're speaking.

[4:36:20] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, it's a good thing my lips move, I guess. Oh, you can't even see that. Let me turn the video on as well.

[4:36:26] Trustee Luckham: So I just wanted to speak to the policy statement topic, because that's a good question that you've raised there. And certainly it may not be visible to trustees at this time. But even two days ago, it was reported to me that another nation had accepted capacity funding to engage with us on the policy statement.

[4:36:48] Trustee Luckham: And so this work is ongoing, and it's not insignificant. And there are big hurdles to jump to get to a place where we are in a good place, with all due respect to all participants, to get to that stage where we're sharing that with the public.

[4:37:07] Trustee Luckham: And so I hope that that is fully appreciated.

[4:37:13] Trustee Luckham: We've been into this for years.

[4:37:15] Trustee Luckham: It's a lot of investment and there's a lot of ongoing work

[4:37:18] Trustee Luckham: that may not be visible.

[4:37:20] Trustee Bernardo: I take your point, but it's simply,

[4:37:25] Trustee Bernardo: I'm not suggesting that there's something wrong

[4:37:27] Trustee Bernardo: with the project or there's something wrong

[4:37:29] Trustee Bernardo: with continuing it or that there's anything wrong

[4:37:31] Trustee Bernardo: with the request.

[4:37:32] Trustee Bernardo: It's just that from my reading of it,

[4:37:35] Trustee Bernardo: it's not uh it's not explained in a rational way as to why communication but why funding needs to

[4:37:44] Trustee Bernardo: be set aside for those things for the policy statement when when there's no discussion

[4:37:51] Trustee Bernardo: within that business or within it's not even a business case but there's no discussion of

[4:37:56] Trustee Bernardo: the um or explanation of the need for it so may i respond to that because like there's no

[4:38:07] Trustee Bernardo: no projection of what the issues are that relate to whether or not the policy statement project

[4:38:13] Trustee Bernardo: will get to the point, for example, that we need the public engagement. That's the kind of thing

[4:38:17] Trustee Bernardo: I'm getting at. Go ahead. Sorry. So

[4:38:20] Trustee Luckham: we heard earlier, right? And this isn't an excuse. It's

[4:38:23] Trustee Luckham: a statement of fact, right? We heard earlier that we are down eight staff. So you figure out how

[4:38:32] Trustee Luckham: how many hours a week that is, that's having to be covered by the remaining staff. And so

[4:38:38] Trustee Luckham: the reason that work is not complete for the deadline that we have before us is because the

[4:38:44] Trustee Luckham: capacity doesn't exist. It was, and this discussion about capacity and resources has been ongoing for

[4:38:51] Trustee Luckham: years and years and years. And we just don't seem to be able to maintain a level of service that is

[4:39:00] Trustee Luckham: necessary to meet the demands of council so um that's why that information doesn't exist today

[4:39:06] Trustee Luckham: as fast as they can

[4:39:08] Trustee Bernardo: trustee electum you're making my point for me which is

[4:39:12] Trustee Bernardo: if the capacity is not

[4:39:14] Trustee Bernardo: there what are we doing uh saying let's set aside this funding on a hope and a prayer that will

[4:39:21] Trustee Bernardo: somehow pull it off i mean it doesn't terminate the um project if we either suspend funding or

[4:39:29] Trustee Bernardo: frankly we're not even at that point i'm just saying can we at least have an explanation

[4:39:34] Trustee Bernardo: within the business case so we have it on record as to what we're actually doing here

[4:39:40] Trustee Bernardo: as opposed to simply being told well we've been doing it for a bunch of years they spend a quarter

[4:39:44] Trustee Bernardo: million on it what's another 30k i mean i i'm sorry that's just not the way to do it

[4:39:50] Trustee Bernardo: now look we're running out of time here i'm afraid uh we only have about 20 minutes

[4:39:54] Trustee Bernardo: before the end of this meeting.

[4:40:00] Trustee Bernardo: I would have liked to have entertained a motion

[4:40:03] Trustee Bernardo: about pushing back some of those business cases,

[4:40:05] Trustee Bernardo: but I'm afraid that may have to wait

[4:40:09] Trustee Bernardo: for another time unfortunately,

[4:40:10] Trustee Bernardo: but

[4:40:10] Voice 8: I

[4:40:14] Trustee Bernardo: see people have got their hands up here.

[4:40:17] Trustee Bernardo: These are I think the last two comments

[4:40:19] Trustee Bernardo: that we can afford to have with respect to the budget

[4:40:24] Trustee Bernardo: of the draft that we're contemplating sending on

[4:40:28] Voice 8: to press council trustee harris clearly

[4:40:34] Voice 6: business as usual is over and needs to be over people that i feel need to start looking at it

[4:40:40] Voice 6: as such there should be alarm bells going off in everybody's mind here we've just had section

[4:40:47] Voice 6: three of the mandate defined we've it's been shown that there's been an imbalanced approach

[4:40:53] Voice 6: and um defining the mandate for many years communities have been harmed and how much

[4:41:00] Voice 6: money was spent doing that we have a workforce housing crisis here on salt spring lake no other

[4:41:06] Voice 6: i'm not sure what the other islands are like now that's what we need to be focusing on

[4:41:13] Voice 6: it's in the mandate and we have all the reason right now to use a corrective approach

[4:41:20] Voice 6: approach in addressing that it's actually it seems i don't know why it seems so simple

[4:41:26] Voice 6: to me but anything that's not addressing the housing crisis at this point should be put aside

[4:41:35] Voice 6: and that's what we need to focus on and clearly that falls on ltcs but trust council can be doing

[4:41:41] Voice 6: things that are that urge ltcs to act appropriately and dealing with it um well those are points

[4:41:48] Voice 6: trustee

[4:41:49] Trustee Bernardo: Harris that are best made before trust counsel because here we're

[4:41:55] Trustee Bernardo: trying to manage the

[4:41:57] Trustee Bernardo: finances of decisions that have already been made and find ourselves in the position of suggesting

[4:42:01] Trustee Bernardo: to trust counsel we might want to rethink a few things but we're not going to decide the policy

[4:42:05] Trustee Bernardo: issue here and

[4:42:06] Voice 6: we do need to rethink it's it's clear right it's it's very

[4:42:10] Trustee Bernardo: clear that may be the

[4:42:11] Trustee Bernardo: case but this isn't the forum for it the trust counsel is the forum for for those big policy

[4:42:17] Trustee Bernardo: see questions well we don't want to be

[4:42:19] Voice 6: i guess my point is why why are we talking about spending

[4:42:21] Voice 6: money on um i'll leave it at that

[4:42:26] Voice 8: yeah thank you trustee evans thank

[4:42:30] Voice 9: you um i'm just noticing that

[4:42:32] Voice 9: we haven't had an opportunity to go through each of the business cases that have been presented to

[4:42:36] Voice 9: us would it be appropriate to suggest that we have a continuance of this meeting to go through them

[4:42:42] Voice 9: and discuss the the merits of them or uh just are you planning on just having a quick open and

[4:42:48] Voice 9: saying, if anyone has anything to say, say it now and rush through them. My only query,

[4:42:55] Voice 9: there's been a lot of topics raised, a lot of concern about spending. So I'm not sure that

[4:43:03] Voice 9: rushing through this is giving them the best due that they deserve. So I'll leave that for you to

[4:43:11] Voice 9: answer.

[4:43:11] Trustee Bernardo: I agree with you, Trustee Evans. We should go through those business cases. We're running out

[4:43:15] Trustee Bernardo: of time here i'm going to suggest that we schedule a special meeting that is solely dedicated to

[4:43:23] Trustee Bernardo: reviewing the business cases and the funding requests and assessing them on their merits

[4:43:28] Trustee Bernardo: and deciding what to do with those requests uh and um it's basically to fill in the blank of

[4:43:35] Trustee Bernardo: the review of this of this content uh is

[4:43:39] Voice 8: there support for this idea amongst the trustees

[4:43:45] Voice 8: Trustee Yelle is shaking her head.

[4:43:48] Voice 8: We don't have time.

[4:43:49] Voice 8: We can't.

[4:43:51] Voice 8: We can't schedule a meeting?

[4:43:55] Trustee Elliott: This meeting for that discussion, sorry.

[4:44:01] Voice 8: Yeah, well, we can't discuss it now,

[4:44:02] Trustee Bernardo: but

[4:44:03] Voice 8: I'm talking about scheduling a new meeting.

[4:44:07] Voice 8: Trustee Evans.

[4:44:09] Voice 9: I can't really put a thumbs up,

[4:44:11] Voice 9: so I'm putting my hands up.

[4:44:12] Voice 9: So yes, I don't really have the time.

[4:44:13] Voice 9: I've taken on a job as well,

[4:44:16] Voice 9: but uh i will make room for another meeting well i mean

[4:44:23] Trustee Bernardo: we're not going to have a chance

[4:44:24] Trustee Bernardo: to review this stuff until the next meeting unless we schedule a special meeting that's

[4:44:29] Trustee Bernardo: the situation we're in that's not going to happen today but not

[4:44:32] Voice 8: even in a general way

[4:44:33] Trustee Bernardo: we're running out of time i'm not

[4:44:35] Voice 9: sure if i froze i was i was i'm for a special meeting

[4:44:42] Trustee Bernardo: all right uh do any other trustees have any opinions about this or want to weigh in on

[4:44:46] Trustee Bernardo: this point i wish to

[4:44:49] Voice 11: support a special meeting and i looked at the trust i i i think we can go

[4:44:56] Voice 11: with the quorum except that it does put an extra load on um audrey julia we would have to do it i

[4:45:03] Voice 11: think we would have to do it in the absence of staff to answer questions we would just have to

[4:45:09] Voice 11: go alone with it because it would be impossible to pull together everybody and we could table

[4:45:16] Voice 11: the questions to be answered later if we tried to schedule it and bring stuff you know to the

[4:45:23] Voice 11: meeting i think it would come

[4:45:24] Voice 8: yeah thank

[4:45:31] Voice 5: you chair i just uh saw the cao's hand up and i i

[4:45:35] Voice 5: suspect he's got some advice on the feasibility of scheduling a special meeting i'm

[4:45:41] Trustee Bernardo: sure he does

[4:45:41] Trustee Bernardo: i wanted to hear from the trustees first uh cal well

[4:45:46] Voice 19: mr chair at the last meeting we went through

[4:45:48] Voice 19: the business cases and we're we're here going through the business cases again or or um we've

[4:45:53] Voice 19: scheduled time and and done that i'm very interested in hearing um that maybe the biz you

[4:45:59] Voice 19: could point out the business cases that need further work and we would do that i think you

[4:46:03] Voice 19: know we've got a march 31st deadline here i think that you can move through this trust council

[4:46:09] Voice 19: meeting and and we can do two things at once um we can bring this budget forward for consideration

[4:46:16] Voice 19: and say, hey, maybe there's some more information needed in these particular areas, but at least

[4:46:22] Voice 19: trustees would be familiar with the topics. In the next six days, if you want business cases

[4:46:29] Voice 19: amended, there's very little time for you to meet and then for us to subsequently amend business

[4:46:36] Voice 19: cases by next Friday. So I still think you have ample opportunity to provide us direction to

[4:46:46] Voice 19: strengthen business cases if that's what it is we've offered you the best we can at this point

[4:46:51] Voice 19: but um if you could point those elements out we would prepare them for your january and

[4:46:56] Voice 19: february meetings as you're moving into your decision on the budget um in october we did not

[4:47:03] Voice 19: we went through them we did not have a fundamental rethink on the business cases and we thought you

[4:47:08] Voice 19: know it's a winnowing process so that we would be going through all the business cases again

[4:47:13] Voice 19: and amending them significantly

[4:47:15] Voice 19: or having a special meeting to

[4:47:17] Voice 19: do it would be a challenge.

[4:47:18] Trustee Bernardo: What meeting at what meeting would you propose

[4:47:20] Trustee Bernardo: the FPC would have the opportunity

[4:47:22] Trustee Bernardo: to share that information?

[4:47:24] Voice 19: In January.

[4:47:26] Voice 19: All right.

[4:47:28] Voice 19: I think your needs can be met.

[4:47:33] Voice 19: And anecdotally, you tell me now

[4:47:35] Voice 19: which of these business cases,

[4:47:37] Voice 19: hey, let's put some time and thinking into this

[4:47:41] Voice 19: that's going to be assistive.

[4:47:43] Voice 19: i'll stand up at trust council in december and say hey we've got this in front of you this is

[4:47:48] Voice 19: our approximate dollar request but it's going to be refined for instance i know i have to say that

[4:47:53] Voice 19: around the salt spring office relocation project i couldn't offer better than what i've got right

[4:47:58] Voice 19: now um but certainly willing to do the work to refine these cases if you need it just just give

[4:48:04] Voice 19: us a little bit of of time to get there

[4:48:06] Trustee Bernardo: okay i can

[4:48:08] Trustee Bernardo: tell you right now in the space of five minutes

[4:48:11] Trustee Bernardo: And it's certainly my own concerns.

[4:48:13] Trustee Bernardo: They don't necessarily represent what everybody in the FPC feels,

[4:48:16] Trustee Bernardo: but I certainly have a series of concerns.

[4:48:21] Voice 8: Should I share them with you now or not?

[4:48:24] Voice 8: By all means.

[4:48:28] Trustee Bernardo: Well, the request that doesn't have a business case

[4:48:31] Trustee Bernardo: is with respect to the ongoing reconciliation issue,

[4:48:34] Trustee Bernardo: a request for $30,000.

[4:48:36] Trustee Bernardo: That might or might not be reasonable.

[4:48:37] Trustee Bernardo: I don't know.

[4:48:39] Trustee Bernardo: I do have a concern that we've just lost a senior advisor

[4:48:42] Trustee Bernardo: who had simply been hired in July.

[4:48:45] Trustee Bernardo: It's not the time to discuss how that came about.

[4:48:48] Trustee Bernardo: That's not a great situation to hire somebody for an important position,

[4:48:51] Trustee Bernardo: and they bail a few months later.

[4:48:53] Trustee Bernardo: It raises a whole bunch of questions.

[4:48:55] Trustee Bernardo: We're not going to discuss them here.

[4:48:56] Trustee Bernardo: This isn't the forum for it, but that's a problem.

[4:49:00] Trustee Bernardo: So

[4:49:00] Voice 19: what can I do on the $30,000?

[4:49:03] Trustee Bernardo: I'm going to finish what

[4:49:05] Voice 19: I'm going to say, okay?

[4:49:07] Trustee Bernardo: And we'll go faster if you don't interrupt.

[4:49:11] Trustee Bernardo: There's no explanation here for why the $30,000 makes sense.

[4:49:15] Trustee Bernardo: when really it looks like from a distance that the reconciliation effort may not be that well

[4:49:24] Trustee Bernardo: coordinated. I don't know if it is or it isn't, but I'd like a clear understanding of

[4:49:32] Trustee Bernardo: and justification for what that $30,000 is going to be spent on and when in respect to what context

[4:49:38] Trustee Bernardo: or is a placeholder hoping that once we have a senior advisor, that person will be able to do

[4:49:45] Trustee Bernardo: for better coordination there's a reference there to contingency fund funding it doesn't tell us

[4:49:51] Trustee Bernardo: what the contingency really is or how much of that thirty thousand dollars is comprised of contingency

[4:49:57] Trustee Bernardo: uh with respect to the communications uh uh funding um i've got the it's the same issue which

[4:50:06] Trustee Bernardo: is there's just not a lot of explanation of what that money is going to be used for rather than

[4:50:11] Trustee Bernardo: just sort of arm waving i'm sorry to use the term in the general direction that we have this need

[4:50:15] Trustee Bernardo: i'd like more specifics you already heard me about my point about the the policy statement uh

[4:50:23] Trustee Bernardo: secretary of services uh it that business case doesn't tell us who the or which are the various

[4:50:31] Trustee Bernardo: entities that will get the funding uh i think it's important if we're going to be spending

[4:50:36] Trustee Bernardo: taxpayer dollars to support third parties uh in the interest of transparency that should

[4:50:42] Trustee Bernardo: be disclosed in as part of the business case and if any of those groups happen to the advocacy

[4:50:47] Trustee Bernardo: advocacy groups it's important that that be justified

[4:50:53] Voice 8: against the mandate um

[4:50:55] Voice 8: a business case

[4:51:04] Trustee Bernardo: i mean it's on the surface it makes sense but i i can't get any sense of what

[4:51:09] Trustee Bernardo: that money will be spent on what the toolkit

[4:51:12] Voice 8: actually looks like like what is this toolkit

[4:51:15] Voice 8: kit with all the

[4:51:22] Voice 8: salt spring relocation issue uh

[4:51:26] Trustee Bernardo: i find that business case completely confusing

[4:51:30] Trustee Bernardo: and it's not like i can't understand the logic of it um there's substantial savings if we just

[4:51:38] Trustee Bernardo: shutter the operation and it's not clear from the language in the business case that staff thinks

[4:51:45] Trustee Bernardo: it's really necessary there's some reference there to political necessity or elected trustees being

[4:51:51] Trustee Bernardo: anxious about it that's a big number two hundred and ten thousand dollars based on one single

[4:52:00] Trustee Bernardo: prospective potential lease that would that would incur 185 000 in leasehold improvements and

[4:52:09] Trustee Bernardo: on what basis like why should we go that i mean that's a huge trade-off and the necessity for it

[4:52:17] Trustee Bernardo: isn't clearly explained in the business case.

[4:52:22] Trustee Bernardo: The full-time GIS person, that's a fully loaded, you know,

[4:52:27] Trustee Bernardo: is that number fully loaded or just the salary?

[4:52:31] Trustee Bernardo: It certainly looks like an important operational function

[4:52:36] Trustee Bernardo: in support of land use planning.

[4:52:39] Trustee Bernardo: It would be helpful if we had more information

[4:52:44] Trustee Bernardo: of what that role is actually going to fulfill.

[4:52:48] Trustee Bernardo: And also if there's some discussion

[4:52:50] Trustee Bernardo: about whether or not that role can be funded

[4:52:52] Trustee Bernardo: by the fact that there's these other advisor positions

[4:52:55] Trustee Bernardo: that go into it.

[4:52:57] Trustee Bernardo: So those are the broad strokes of my particular concerns.

[4:53:04] Trustee Bernardo: So you have them.

[4:53:06] Trustee Bernardo: Now we're down to the last five minutes here.

[4:53:08] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Graham, put your hand up.

[4:53:12] Trustee Bernardo: I'm going to entertain you

[4:53:14] Trustee Bernardo: and trustee peterson here please fire away we we're probably going to run a little late because

[4:53:18] Trustee Bernardo: we've got a few things we've got to clean up here but we've got to wrap up this discussion on the on

[4:53:22] Trustee Bernardo: on the on the budget and the reality is we've heard from the ceo we're not going to be reviewing any

[4:53:28] Trustee Bernardo: of those business cases or pushing them back until we have an opportunity to do so in january anyhow

[4:53:33] Trustee Bernardo: trustee grant thank

[4:53:35] Voice 4: you chair i want to take advantage of the offer that the ceo gave to

[4:53:39] Voice 4: to point out any of the business cases

[4:53:41] Voice 4: that we individually felt were a little weak.

[4:53:44] Voice 4: And for me, the CityView bylaw portal at $90,000,

[4:53:49] Voice 4: I had a really tough time understanding

[4:53:51] Voice 4: the urgency in that one.

[4:53:54] Voice 4: The business case does explain that,

[4:53:58] Voice 4: yes, we can continue to use the current system.

[4:54:03] Voice 4: And it seemed that the CityView bylaw portal

[4:54:08] Voice 4: is focused most on enforcement and in my mind that's a small part of the work that we do at

[4:54:14] Voice 4: the trust it i know it's a vocal part but i just i would like to see a little more information as to

[4:54:21] Voice 4: why that's really that necessary this

[4:54:24] Voice 8: year thank you that's all i had to say

[4:54:29] Voice 8: thank you um trustee peterson thank

[4:54:35] Voice 5: you mr chair um it's clear that we we won't all be able to get

[4:54:40] Voice 5: through all of our questions that we might have today on these business cases and and uh

[4:54:46] Voice 5: it is important to remember that uh trust council is going to have a tussle with us next

[4:54:52] Voice 5: and then uh the results of that will come back to this committee in january and february

[4:54:59] Voice 5: so just important to to uh remember that i would just uh just one point for uh for uh chair bernardo's

[4:55:09] Voice 5: information when it comes to the secretariat services function there the determination on

[4:55:18] Voice 5: who gets what is made by trust programs committee if the funding is approved and

[4:55:26] Voice 5: so there isn't a way to know in advance because until we get the funding we don't put out the

[4:55:33] Voice 5: it's not available so no one can apply at least the way we're doing it now is we secure the funding

[4:55:40] Voice 5: groups apply trust programs committee makes recommendations about who gets what so just a

[4:55:46] Voice 5: point of information and uh that's it for now well

[4:55:51] Trustee Bernardo: that's that's helpful trustee peterson but

[4:55:53] Trustee Bernardo: it would also be helpful to to have in the business case a discussion of the guidelines

[4:55:59] Trustee Bernardo: that the committee follows in

[4:56:03] Voice 8: making those decisions.

[4:56:06] Voice 8: Trustee Harris.

[4:56:09] Voice 8: Well, a simple guideline may be,

[4:56:13] Voice 6: given what we know with section three of the mandate

[4:56:17] Voice 6: at this point, wouldn't the onus not be on us to,

[4:56:24] Voice 6: as far as whatever we bring to trust council,

[4:56:26] Voice 6: as far as what the budget will be, what money will be spent,

[4:56:30] Voice 6: half of that at least should be to protect

[4:56:33] Voice 6: protect community, housing, livelihoods, First Nations interests. Pretty simple. Thank you.

[4:56:42] Voice 8: Thank you for that. And I think

[4:56:45] Trustee Bernardo: that is the end of the discussion with respect to the budget.

[4:56:49] Trustee Bernardo: We've gone as far as we can. We're down to the last bits here. Now, we're going on to

[4:56:54] Trustee Bernardo: Section 8.1, the timing of receipt of business cases. We're supposed to have a discussion about

[4:57:01] Trustee Bernardo: that. We don't have time for the discussion. I think we're going to have to defer that. That's

[4:57:05] Trustee Bernardo: a process issue that can wait i'm afraid we have at 8.2 the city view demonstration a request for

[4:57:11] Trustee Bernardo: decision um uh the request is simply request by staff or actually it's staff is requesting

[4:57:19] Trustee Bernardo: that we request that to schedule the demonstration um director sir mac could you please uh

[4:57:26] Trustee Bernardo: briefly speak to this point sure

[4:57:30] Voice 20: mr chair uh the financial planning committee asks for a

[4:57:33] Voice 20: demonstration of the city uh city view bylaw portal um expansion pack i guess with the city

[4:57:40] Voice 20: view software package that we're getting uh managed to talk to the city view staff these

[4:57:45] Voice 20: are the days they were prepared to offer uh if these days don't work i'm certainly willing to

[4:57:49] Voice 20: go back and renegotiate um but you see two days here that were presented for your for

[4:57:54] Voice 20: that demonstration staff proposed that it'd be an education session uh to avoid uh unnecessary like

[4:58:02] Voice 20: discussion outside of a business meeting so that it's a presentation of the software. Of course,

[4:58:09] Voice 20: you may be able to ask questions about the software, but it's not a discussion point

[4:58:12] Voice 20: about the merits of it or what have you. You can take those discussions back to an actual meeting,

[4:58:18] Voice 20: unless that's not what the FPC would like to do. So that's my summary.

[4:58:23] Trustee Bernardo: Well, it

[4:58:23] Trustee Bernardo: sounds like what you're proposing here is an educational session so we know what

[4:58:26] Trustee Bernardo: heck we're getting into uh hard to object with that certainly in my case that the timing works

[4:58:33] Trustee Bernardo: i can't speak for the other trustees uh uh briefly trustee peterson uh

[4:58:40] Voice 5: yeah i'm i'm in favor of uh

[4:58:43] Voice 5: of having the demonstration and uh i don't know how quickly we could do a straw poll here on which

[4:58:49] Voice 5: of those proposed dates works best for most of us well

[4:58:53] Trustee Bernardo: um i'm gonna suggest that what we do is um

[4:59:00] Trustee Bernardo: why don't we why don't we somebody make the motion that staff be requested to schedule

[4:59:05] Trustee Bernardo: demonstration in the city view software by law enforcement extension period and then we just

[4:59:12] Trustee Bernardo: leave it to staff to sort of work out a time that you know um you know it can canvas uh dates among

[4:59:19] Trustee Bernardo: committee members and uh organize it that way rather than locking people in at this time uh

[4:59:28] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Luckham.

[4:59:29] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, I just note that there are three of us

[4:59:31] Trustee Luckham: on this financial planning committee

[4:59:33] Trustee Luckham: that are on the Gabriola Local Trust Committee.

[4:59:35] Trustee Luckham: And we do have a meeting on November the 23rd

[4:59:37] Trustee Luckham: that'll likely be a full day.

[4:59:39] Trustee Luckham: And so I would propose that, in fact,

[4:59:42] Trustee Luckham: I'm going to just jump the gun here, so to speak.

[4:59:44] Trustee Luckham: I would move that the meeting be held on Wednesday,

[4:59:46] Trustee Luckham: November the 23rd to support an educational session.

[4:59:50] Trustee Luckham: 29th.

[4:59:51] Voice 15: City view.

[4:59:53] Voice 15: 29th.

[4:59:54] Voice 15: Trustee Luckham, are you prepared to read that out

[4:59:57] Voice 15: as the motion as written is.

[5:00:00] Voice 15: the recommendation i

[5:00:01] Trustee Luckham: move that the financial planning committee requests staff to schedule

[5:00:03] Trustee Luckham: demonstration of the city view software by law enforcement extension on november the 29th

[5:00:10] Trustee Luckham: at or near uh one

[5:00:14] Voice 8: o'clock do we have a seconder i'll second i'll

[5:00:22] Voice 11: second it i'll second it but i

[5:00:24] Voice 11: just want to make a point it's been asked for about financial planning but i would assume that

[5:00:29] Voice 11: that all trustees would get an invitation to attend

[5:00:32] Voice 11: if they want to, yeah?

[5:00:33] Voice 11: Yeah.

[5:00:35] Voice 11: Okay, that's fine.

[5:00:36] Voice 11: I would prefer 11 o'clock, but okay.

[5:00:39] Voice 11: I'll leave it with one as it is, thanks.

[5:00:42] Voice 10: I second it.

[5:00:46] Voice 8: I'm putting it up for a vote.

[5:00:47] Voice 8: All those in favor, please raise your hands.

[5:00:53] Voice 8: Please lower your hands.

[5:00:56] Voice 8: All those opposed, please raise your hands.

[5:01:00] Voice 8: Trustee

[5:01:00] Trustee Bernardo: Bowen, your hand is up.

[5:01:02] Trustee Bernardo: Is that intended?

[5:01:04] Trustee Bernardo: Resolution passes unanimously.

[5:01:06] Trustee Bernardo: okay uh moving on to the next item uh new business uh none work program usually we review this and

[5:01:16] Trustee Bernardo: refer it to trust council for each quarterly and the request is that we approve or the proposed

[5:01:24] Trustee Bernardo: work from as presented and forwarded to the trust council

[5:01:28] Voice 8: for approval uh trustee evans all right um

[5:01:34] Voice 9: i was just trying to get this in my calendar what was the date and time of the uh meeting it was the

[5:01:39] Voice 9: 23rd at what time

[5:01:40] Trustee Luckham: 29th one o'clock one

[5:01:43] Voice 9: o'clock thank 29th of one o'clock thank you okay um

[5:01:47] Voice 8: work program um do we have any objection uh to to forwarding it as is to trust council uh trust

[5:01:59] Voice 8: feet graham still moved as is do i have a seconder i'll second it a second

[5:02:10] Voice 8: All those in favor of the proposed work program

[5:02:18] Trustee Bernardo: as presented in the agenda,

[5:02:20] Trustee Bernardo: be forwarded to the trust council work group.

[5:02:23] Trustee Bernardo: Please raise your hands.

[5:02:27] Voice 8: Please lower your hands.

[5:02:28] Voice 8: Those opposed, please indicate.

[5:02:31] Voice 8: There are none.

[5:02:32] Trustee Bernardo: Motion passes.

[5:02:35] Trustee Bernardo: We don't have any, let's see.

[5:02:38] Trustee Bernardo: All right, next meeting.

[5:02:38] Trustee Bernardo: The proposed date is January 24th to be confirmed

[5:02:43] Voice 8: when a trust council adopts their schedule.

[5:02:48] Voice 8: Not clear to me that whether this is for information

[5:02:53] Voice 8: or whether we actually have to decide anything.

[5:02:56] Trustee Bernardo: Perhaps staff could help me out with this.

[5:03:00] Trustee Bernardo: What are we supposed to do with this?

[5:03:02] Voice 2: I can help chair.

[5:03:03] Voice 2: So financial planning committee has already set

[5:03:05] Voice 2: their meeting dates for the next year.

[5:03:07] Voice 2: So this was the meeting date that was set.

[5:03:09] Voice 2: So nothing to action.

[5:03:10] Voice 2: We have that comment there about trust council

[5:03:13] Voice 2: adopting their schedule as of course,

[5:03:14] Voice 2: if they adopt a schedule that conflicts with fpc we'd have to amend but nothing to action today

[5:03:20] Trustee Bernardo: all right thank you for that um i don't believe we have any reason to have a closed meeting today

[5:03:27] Trustee Bernardo: and therefore there's no reason to have a rising report unless anybody has anything we're running

[5:03:33] Trustee Bernardo: a little over time by four minutes but unless anybody has anything to um add to anything or

[5:03:40] Trustee Bernardo: or any issues that they feel are unusually pressing,

[5:03:44] Trustee Bernardo: I'm about to adjourn the meeting.

[5:03:48] Trustee Bernardo: Thank you, everybody.

[5:03:49] Trustee Bernardo: It's a long day, but we didn't get through everything,

[5:03:53] Trustee Bernardo: but we got through a lot.

[5:03:54] Trustee Bernardo: So thank you, the meeting is adjourned.